PUBLIC VALUE INTERNATIONAL
publishes contributions from scientists, media experts and journalists focusing on specific challenges for Pubic Service Media.
• How can PSM defend and protect its independence?
• How can PSM produce distinctive media quality?
• How can PSM fullfil its mission & remit?
• How can PSM deliver public value for all segments of society?
• How can PSM keep pace with the tremendous competition from digital giants?
• How can PSM counteract fake news, filter bubbles and hate speech?
• How can PSM find solutions for upcoming challenges?
Digital transformation and polarisation of society are creating severe disruptions for our societies.
PUBLIC VALUE INTERNATIONAL investigates the future role of public service media supporting social cohesion, democracy and citizenship.
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STAND FIRM
They label journalists as “scum”, “bugs”, and “bastards”, threaten them with lawsuits that could ruin their careers, and demand their dismissal. They cut funding for critical media and exclude unfavorable reporters from press conferences. To exert their influence on editorial offices, they engage in “message control”, redirect publicly funded advertising to their advantage, and undermine formerly independent public service media. Whether it‘s Donald Trump in the USA, Viktor Orban in Hungary, Robert Fico in Slovakia, or in Sweden, Germany, Italy, or Austria: Populist politicians and parties aggressively and sometimes vulgarly attack media and journalists who do not meet their expectations. What began as singular, mostly right– wing populist propaganda has become a European and now international political wildfire.
Simultaneously, alarming disruptions arise from digital transformation, shaking, threatening, or even destroying the foundations of democratic public discourse: The digital technologies once celebrated as breakthroughs for societal diversity have become serious threats to freedom of expression and democracy considering scenarios of data misuse, largely uncontrolled artificial intelligence, mass surveillance, and an overwhelming amount of fake news and propaganda. Instead of using editorial journalism and mass media – however varied they may be in quality and orientation – media consumption is now often focused on personalized communication through social media, controlled by the invisible hand of unrestrained algorithms and commercial interests. The almost dominant rule of a handful of global data corporations – and erratic CEOs – combined with populist attacks on quality journalism acts like a binary agent that erodes what was long taken for granted: Media that guarantee the diversity of opinion necessary for democratic discourse. Critical journalism that questions and uncovers what would otherwise remain hidden. Free and independent media that act as the “fourth estate of democracy” to control politics and the economy.
All media, especially public service media, are not only challenged but acutely threatened. Facing media consumption shaped by international business models, they fight for their relevance with the audience, sometimes for their very existence. In the face of attacks from populist parties, who leave no doubt that
they will turn their threats against critical – especially public service media into concrete repressions, they fight for their independence. So, what to do? How can and should media defend themselves? How can and should public service media prevent the long arm of politics from reaching into their editorial offices? How can the independence of the media, rightly considered a condition for quality journalism, be protected and defended? We posed these questions to media experts, scientists, and journalists, as well as institutions and authors from the USA and numerous European countries. International organizations such as the OSCE, the “European Federation of Journalists”, and the “European Broadcasting Union”, as well as committed individuals from countries currently facing a massive rise in populist parties responded.
The focus of the present comments is on a problem-solving perspective: What should be demanded from media policy? How can attacks and threats be countered? What strategies and measures are suitable to prevent disruptive, democracy– threatening developments and negative effects of digital transformation? And finally: What can and should media and journalists themselves do to defend their independence? What can they learn from the past?
There should be no misunderstanding: Journalists who criticize can, of course, also be criticized. Journalism, defined as the “fourth estate of democracy” to control political and economic power, must itself be controllable and, above all, transparent. Those who report with a strict eye and comment with harsh words should not exempt themselves from public criticism. The populist attack on free media cannot be answered with whining or uncritical defense of the status quo; rather with, an open, especially self-reflective discourse that allows for justified criticism and still holds course when it comes to the reliability and credibility of journalism. The past has shown how vulnerable democratic structures are, how quickly can be destroyed what is taken for granted, how fragile a system of “checks & balances” is. The challenge for the future will be whether resilient democracies can protect and, if necessary, defend a public communication space based on the power of arguments and not the volume of “alternative truths” and propaganda. For quality media, including public service media, this means standing firm against populist attacks and reliably fulfilling their public mandate.
The contributions in this anthology aim to stimulate a constructive debate on how politics, society, and media can respond to populism and negative effects of digital transformation, and the simultaneous negative effects of digital transformation, and what measures are suitable when it comes to protect a resilient democratic public sphere. We thank the authors for their analysis, how public service media can face the challenges of the future.
KLAUS UNTERBERGER KONRAD MITSCHKA
ORF PUBLIC VALUE
CONTENT
THIBAUT BRUTTIN, FRITZ HAUSJELL & MARTIN WASSERMAIR, REPORTERS
QUALITY CHECK
MICHELLE ROVERELLI EUROPEAN BROADCASTING UNION
Across Europe, we are increasingly seeing the rise of political movements, often from the far right, that don‘t just criticize public service media, but try to control or dismantle it. It‘s a direct threat to the independence of journalism and to democracy itself. As public service media, we can‘t just stay silent. We have to call this out for what it is. It risks turning public service media into state media, and that‘s not acceptable in a democracy. We need to be very clear that our role is to serve the public, not any party or politician. That means holding all sides to account based on facts. We‘ve got to keep doing what we do, good journalism. We‘ve got to be telling the truth and show that we‘re working for everyone in society, not just for one party or one viewpoint. At the same time, we also need stronger safeguards. That includes stronger regulatory, legal protections and sustainable funding models that make sure broadcasters aren‘t at the mercy of whoever‘s in power. The upcoming EMFA, the European Media Freedom Act, from the European Commission is a step in the right direction. It puts in place real safeguards and mechanisms to protect the editorial independence of public broadcasters, and we at the EBU solely support this. We also believe that when one of us is attacked, in a way we are all under attack and we must all speak up, that solidarity matters. We‘re stronger when we‘re together, and that is why the work of the European Broadcasting Union is so important. We must stay focused on why public service media exists in the first place, to inform, to educate, to represent the whole of society, and even and especially when that is politically inconvenient.
We’re living through a time of massive change in the media world. And not all of it is for the better. The rise of powerful online platforms, the spread of AI generated content, and increasing attacks on journalism, often from populist movements, are really testing Europe‘s democratic foundations. What is worrying is how easily false information can now flood the online space. As we all know, algorithms on major platforms tend to reward the loudest, most extreme voices, and not always the most accurate ones. And with AI, it‘s even easier to create deepfakes and manipulate public opinion. This is not just a tech issue, it‘s a democratic one. And at the same time, we‘re seeing public broadcasters and journalists being openly attacked politically and sometimes even unfortunately physically. In some countries, public service media is under pressure from governments trying to control or to stop it. And when
independent journalism is undermined like that, it weakens one of the pillars of democracy, the rights of citizens to get reliable, impartial information. This combination, tech platforms that amplify this information and political actors who discredit real journalism, is creating a very dangerous mix. It blurs the line between truth and lies and makes it much harder for people to engage in an open, informed debate. We believe public service media has a critical role to play here. We all have a critical role to play here. Of course we‘re not always perfect, but we are committed to serving the public interest and not private profits or political agendas. Europe really needs trusted, independent journalism, now more than ever, to help keep democracy strong.
Public service media has been around for over 100 years now, the EBU for 75 years. And I‘m actually quite hopeful and positive about the future. Across Europe, public service broadcasters remain the most trusted source of news in over 90% of countries. And that didn‘t happen by accident. It is the result of decades of so much time and so much time investment into building up that independence, that accuracy of information, that quality of information. When things get serious, people do turn to public service media. But we can‘t just rest on this and we can‘t just rely on past achievements. We‘ve got to meet people where they are, and especially younger audiences. That means investing in digital, that means embracing and using AI responsibly and telling the stories in new, fresh, creative ways. We must be more transparent to show how we work and why we can be trusted. And initiatives such as the new “Eurovision Spotlight” of which ORF is a member to foster collaboration on fact checking amongst public service broadcasters in Europe and beyond are important. Additionally, the EBU’s “European Perspectives” provided over 10,000 trusted news stories in 2024 through a digital newsroom. One thing is certain: Our independence is non-negotiable. In order to not only survive, but thrive, we need sustainable funding, so that we can plan long-term and as any other business would need to do and keep innovating. And third, that‘s why the EBU exists: We should deepen our collaborations internationally. We‘re stronger, when we work together, sharing content, sharing tools and speaking with one voice when it comes to policy.
THE DEMOCRACY SHIELD
THIBAUT BRUTTIN, FRITZ HAUSJELL & MARTIN WASSERMAIR REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS
Against the backdrop of geopolitical upheavals, the European Union and its member states have declared the military buildup of the continent a priority. Meanwhile, their main adversaries are investing in a different battlefield. Manipulation of facts, state propaganda in the media, disinformation campaigns on social networks—all means are justified to undermine democratic societies from within. Considering this, the EU‘s responses appear too timid. A jolt is needed to make Europe a space where reliable information and journalism take precedence over lies and state propaganda.
The information offensive of authoritarian regimes aims to control public debate by suppressing journalism in their own countries and undermining trust in the democratic idea through information manipulation. While Europe buys tanks and missiles for several hundred billion euros, China and Russia are busy building digital troll regiments, recruiting “fake journalists”, and promoting the broadcast of their international media.
In the age of global information warfare, the attributes of power have changed. They include digital manipulation operations that flood social networks with false or distorted content. They rely on the ability of well-funded international state media to spread the vision of their patron power worldwide. Finally, they involve very violent transnational repression of journalists in exile.
A still timid response
Since March 2022, the sanctions imposed by the Council of the European Union against Russia include a ban on the dissemination of certain state media, including “Russia Today” and “Sputnik”, in the European information space and apply to a number of companies and individuals. However, numerous studies point to the lack of enforcement of these sanctions, particularly on the internet, where the content of these media remains largely accessible to European users.1
1 Report by Science Feedback “Sanctioned but thriving“, Dezember 2024 https://science. feedback.org/sanctioned-but-thriving-how-online-platforms-fail-to-address-the-widespreadpresence-of-entities-under-eu-sanctions/
The reality is that the EU struggles to impose the rules meant to protect us—in this case, the Digital Services Act (DSA)—on American social networks, which are the main amplifiers of these malicious foreign interferences. The investigations initiated by the European Commission take too long. In the meantime, disinformation professionals continue to flood social networks. Worse, they openly declare hostility to any form of content moderation, such as “Meta,” which has decided to end its fact-checking program in 2025.
Avoiding the trap of false equivalences
To better combat foreign interference and disinformation, the European Commission now proposes the establishment of a “European Democracy Shield.” With one prerequisite: The necessary European communication strategy must not lead to the temptation of strategic communication; in other words, the black magic of propaganda can only be countered by the white magic of journalism.
Democracies can win this information war. By avoiding falling into the trap of false equivalence set by the enemies of journalism, by not responding to propaganda with more propaganda, and by going beyond fact-checking without betraying their values. This is especially true at a time when the United States is withdrawing from the world and abandoning its historical support for journalism.
In the information sector, as in the defense sector, Europe must build its own autonomy. It can rely on journalism as a trusted third party, not only to expose propagandistic interference but above all to provide every citizen with the reliable information they need to navigate the world. Three concrete steps can help achieve this goal.
Protect, promote, support
First, Europe must establish conditions for the opening of its information space. All media from third countries should agree to comply with the rules of the European audiovisual market if they wish to access this market, particularly the rules regarding independence, honesty, and pluralism of information. This is a matter of fair competition, but also of sovereignty. With authoritarian
states, the principle of reciprocity should apply: A country that does not allow the dissemination of European media to its population should not be entitled to disseminate its own media in the EU.
Furthermore, major digital platforms must be required to highlight reliable sources of information, meaning media that operate according to journalistic standards and meet high transparency and independence criteria, such as the “Journalism Trust Initiative.” As long as platforms prioritize growth and advertising revenue over content quality and integrity, the disinformation industry will continue to thrive.
Finally, the global information war is, in many ways, a war against those who try to inform us despite difficult circumstances. Europe is a refuge for many foreign journalists and media who have had to go into exile due to their profession. They are potential actors in the fight against disinformation and foreign interference, provided that host countries protect them from transnational repression, promote their resumption of work, and help them circumvent state censorship to reach their audience.
For Europe, it is time to become fully aware of the threat to its democratic model—by giving journalism the means to fulfill its essential task: to inform citizens reliably, independently, and pluralistically.
IT’S TIME FOR PUBLIC SERVICE MEDIA
MAJA SEVER & RENATE SCHROEDER EUROPEAN FEDERATION OF JOURNALISTS
Public service media is there to serve the public—the citizens, who fund them and to whom they owe responsibility, transparency, and trust. In times of democratic instability, the rise of populism, and increasingly frequent attacks on media freedom, public broadcasters should be the backbone of the media ecosystem – the strongest pillar – precisely because they do not - or less- rely on advertisers or politically influenced funding. They should be the guardians of truth and open dialogue, resisting anti-democratic forces not with propaganda, but with facts, ethics, quality, and integrity. Unfortunately, the reality is often different. Today, public service media are under major pressure. On the one hand, they are increasingly targeted by political interference, politicised staffing, program influence, and attempts at instrumentalisation. On the other hand, public service media suffer uncertainty: we’re seeing restructuring plans in many PSMs across Europe, which involve staff reductions, program and revenue cuts, and deteriorating funding systems. The lack of vision and political will to protect and strengthen public service media as the foundation of media infrastructure poses a serious threat to society and democracy—far beyond the scope of media alone.
It is crucial to emphasize: there is no answer to populism, no defense of truth, and no inclusive public debate without journalism – strong, independent journalism within public service media. But even within PSMs themselves, especially among management, there is often a failure to grasp a key truth: without strong, professional, independent journalism – there is no public service. Because of such lack of awareness and proper practice, public service media are losing trust and becoming increasingly vulnerable to attack. Without strong journalism, the space for disinformation, manipulation, fear, and polarisation expands. Public service media must offer more than content distribution platforms. They must remain or become active players in the fight for freedom of expression, pluralism, social inclusion, audience engagement and media literacy. For this, journalists must be guaranteed the conditions, protection, and support to do their work according to the highest professional standards.
Within the European Federation of Journalists and its Broadcasting Expert Group (BREG), we bring together representatives of PSMs from across Europe who witness daily how demanding—but necessary – this struggle is. We see editorial freedom being stifled, funding being cut, and political control being pushed through “reforms”, undermining professional autonomy.
In our advocacy for the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA), we fought for the legal protection of public service media independence to be embedded in the European framework. Article 5 of EMFA provides measures to protect PSM from political pressure and aims to ensure financial sustainability to fulfil its remit. This is an important step forward. But this protection is still not a reality. We are now entering a crucial phase of implementation. And while we wait for EU rules to translate into concrete protection mechanisms, battles against public service media are taking place all over Europe.
In Croatia, we are witnessing a crisis moment, with hundreds of layoffs announced at the public broadcaster—without a clear plan, public debate, or vision that would justify such cuts. Consolidation is happening without a mission—and without a mission, there is no public interest.
In Spain, every Friday, we stand in solidarity with colleagues in Galicia who are protesting in defense of public service media values. Several regions have formed the alliance RTVs Públicas en Lucha – a united front against commercialization and political interference.
In France, we are fighting against a reform imposed by the Minister of Culture to centralize management further, aiming to tighten political control over newsrooms and reduce budgets. This year alone, €150 million in public funding has been lost. Journalists will protest in front of the National Assembly on the day the law enters parliamentary procedure.
In Italy, we witness the shrinking of the editorial independence of the RAI while politicians place “their representatives” in the board of the management of the PSM.
In Germany, the extreme right party AFD, but also politicians from some other parties attacks the Public Service Media and try to destabilize the financing of the PSM.
In Finland, every 6th regional journalist working for YLE risks losing his or her job.
However, there has never been a greater need for independent information and for media capable of separating fact from propaganda and analysis from manipulation. So what needs to be done? First, we must clearly say that public service media are not relics of the past. They are not slow dinosaurs in the age of TikTok. They can be the strongest pillar of media resilience if given independence, stability, and strategic development. Everyone with influence – politicians, unions, citizens, European institutions – must realize that without journalism in public service media, there is no public value. A program without a free journalist is not a public service – it is PR for those in power. We must strengthen international solidarity. The attacks are local, but the resistance must be European. We need constant collaboration, the exchange of practices, mutual support, and a united front that sends a clear message: public service media are democratic infrastructure, not political toys. Finally, PSM must recognize their historical responsibility. They cannot hide behind procedures, institutions, or the architecture of neutrality. They must step forward to the public and clearly state why they exist, why they matter, and what they will do to fulfill their mission.We need more, not less engagement and dialogue between journalists including freelancers and management on new formats and programs and how to better engage and inspire the diverse audiences and get their trust and interest in PSM. We need to better address groups which are socially excluded but part of our enriching multicultural societies. We need to overcome bridges and fight echo chambers and polarisation. In times of disinformation and an increasingly toxic information ecosystem, media literacy programs, fact checking and more news instead of less is urgent. Several PSM in Europe deliver, and their practices must be shown. We love Eurovision, but that won’t defend the independence or status of PSM in society. This article is also a call for action. A call to action – because the time to act is not “when EMFA comes into force”, not “after the elections”, not “when things settle down.” It’s time for public service media – and all of us with them – to respond clearly, loudly, and professionally to anti-democratic populism and attacks on media freedom. Not out of defense, but out of the belief that journalism in the public interest is the foundation of a free society.
DEFENDING MEDIA FREEDOM AMID EVOLVING THREATS
INTERVIEW WITH JAN BRAATHU OSCE REPRESENTATIVE ON FREEDOM OF THE MEDIA
How does the disruptive change of the media system affect democracy and freedom of speech?
For democracy to thrive, the information environment has to be conducive to media freedom, and pluralism, thereby providing individuals and societies with the relevant and credible information they need in order to make informed decisions. Today’s information ecosystem, however, is dominated by a few very large platforms – digital giants – that have amassed immense power as gatekeepers to information. They have become private arbitrators and global regulators of speech, increasingly deploying AI to shape and arbitrate information and news.
Big Tech is big business. Their advertising revenue stems from prioritizing sensationalism, polarization and disinformation – at odds with accuracy, diversity, or the public interest – and monetizing, by using and training their AI applications on material from content creators such as the media.
These challenges have been exacerbated by the advent of generative AI that is further fragmenting a shared reality – without which it becomes impossible to sustain an engaged citizenry and meaningful democratic discourse. Recent policy shifts and increasing collusion between tech and political power further impact the already complex relationship between journalism and Big Tech, characterised by growing media dependencies, and a struggle for news visibility. This further undermines media viability. These developments make it increasingly difficult for the media to fulfil its crucial role in democracies, for peace and security: to provide information, to scrutinize those in power, to hold governments to account, to investigate and report on matters of public interest.
How can societies protect the independence of the media?
One of the problems that right-wing populism poses for the media and journalists is that its public discourse typically includes strong anti-media rhetoric, challenging the credibility of independent journalists and denigrating fact-based jour-
nalism. As the RFoM and other media freedom mandate holders stated in their 2023 Joint Declaration, “politicians and public officials should refrain from making statements that undermine public trust in media as a democratic institution or endanger the safety of journalists and media workers.” Furthermore, the 2021 Joint Declaration emphasizes that the growing incidence of online and offline “hate speech”, disinformation and dangerous rhetoric against and scapegoating the media pose an existential threat to the right of information and undermine democratic institutions.
Media and journalists also play an important role in countering antidemocratic tendencies. Media should do precisely what they can do best: provide professional and ethical journalism, informing about relevant aspects of the issues they cover in order to inform audiences, asking critical questions and providing a platform to all relevant actors. Furthermore, media can strengthen news literacy by showing how journalism and journalists work in a transparent way. This includes showing accountability for potential mistakes.
Society plays a key role in supporting the independence of media. However, in order to do this, society, first of all, needs to be aware of the fundamental role that independent journalism plays for democratic societies. This requires media literacy, the understanding of the difference between journalistic and other kinds of information. As the report on Fostering Media Freedom Literacy, published by the RFoM Office in 2024, states, media literacy and media and information literacy (MIL) encompass a range of skills, competencies and knowledge that can empower citizens to make informed decisions in relation to the media content that they consume, create and disseminate - thereby influencing and strengthening democratic societies. As such, it is a critical skill-set for the preservation and development of democratic values and principles.
Media Freedom Literacy thus enables society and especially political actors to see independent journalism as essential infrastructure of democratic society. This infrastructure can be maintained by providing a suitable (self-)regulatory framework to protect journalistic independence from political, legal and economic threats. Efforts to interfere in editorial decisions have intensified over recent years with the platformization of public information and discourse. Special attention should thus be given to the role of Big Tech platforms and their impact on the information that people receive. Platform algorithms are designed to keep
users on their platform by serving them more of what they already read, in more and more extreme forms. Legally, platforms violate intellectual property rights. Economically, platforms absorb nearly all advertising revenue that previously sustained journalistic media. Protecting the intellectual property of journalistic media organizations is one way to address this; strong Public Service Media have proven to be another important tool.
Public Service Media serve an essential societal function by providing reliable and diverse information, thus allowing all individuals to participate in the public discourse. With the public interest as their priority, Public Service Media can counter polarizing and hateful speech while at the same time strengthening public trust in societal institutions.
International organizations also have an important role to play in supporting independent journalism as a pillar of democracy and security. The OSCE, for example, has from its beginning recognized the vital role of free and independent media in upholding democratic values. In 1997, the participating States established the office of the Representative on Freedom of the media to promote press freedom in all 57 participating states of the OSCE. Furthermore, by adopting the OSCE Ministerial Council Decision 3/18 on the Safety of Journalists the OSCE’s participating States committed to align their laws, policies, and practices with international obligations and OSCE commitments. This commitment underscores the importance of fostering an environment where journalists can operate independently and without undue interference.
Do you have a recommendation what should be done in the next months and years?
We find ourselves in challenging times, and it is clear that the complexity of the global information environment will only deepen in the years ahead. The media, which once stood as a cornerstone of democratic societies, now finds itself under growing strain from multiple directions. Economic pressures continue to undermine the viability of independent journalism. Political repression and legal harassment (SLAPPs) seek to silence critical voices. And technological disruption, particularly the rise of disinformation, deepfakes, and algorithmic amplification of polarizing content, is reshaping how information is produced, distributed, and consumed.
All of these dynamics are contributing to a widening trust deficit between the public and the media. This erosion of trust not only threatens the sustainability of independent journalism but also strikes at the heart of democratic life.
What is ultimately needed is a revival of the collective recognition of the media’s indispensable role in safeguarding democracy, peace, and security. This revival must be supported by concrete action, like investing in media literacy and supporting public interest journalism. We need forward-looking conceptual and regulatory frameworks that place democratic values, societal stability, and the rule of law at the center. And we must unite across governments, civil society, media, and the technology sector to reaffirm and protect media freedom as a public good. In this spirit, we are developing a Public Interest Framework—a conceptual and policy tool to help ensure that journalism and information systems serve the public good. It promotes editorial independence, ethical standards, financial sustainability, and the visibility of fact-based content. The framework aims to strengthen the democratic function of journalism by creating conditions in which trusted, pluralistic information can thrive, even in the face of political pressure, economic constraints, and technological disruption. It is grounded in OSCE commitments and designed to support both national resilience and international security.
Media outlets also have a responsibility. As the Norwegian Schibsted Media Group pointed out in their report from November 2024 on “Editorial Media as defenders of democracies”, editorial media must produce ethical and credible, relevant high-quality content that builds trust. They need to demonstrate, in practice, the value of free, editorial media.
If we work together - governments, media, tech platforms and international organizations - with a shared understanding and commitment, then we can protect the media environment for the benefit of democratic societies. The Representative on Freedom of the Media and the RFoM Office are actively working with this objective in mind
LEGITIMACY IN THE FACE OF ADVERSE WINDS
GILLES MARCHAND
MEDIA&PHILANTHROPY INITIATIVE (IMP) AT THE UNIVERSITY OF GENEVA
A bad wind is blowing across Europe, directed squarely at public service media. It is strong, turbulent, and it unsettles society. It calls into question foundational values such as media independence, respect for difference, and openness to the world. Put simply, it shakes the democratic structures that, perhaps too complacently, we believed were firmly established.
Contemporary liberal societies are undergoing deep and rapid transformations— technological, environmental, geopolitical, and cultural. These changes are interconnected, and their combined effects pose two critical challenges. First, how can we maintain social cohesion among individuals who are less connected by geography or institutions than by emotions, identity, or digital communities? Second, how can we preserve rational, time-consuming, compromise-based approaches in an age of radical views that encourage conflict and even violence?
Democracy is not a given, nor is it a permanent state recognized by all and shielded from turbulent winds. It is not a finished product, but rather a project that must be constantly reworked. Without careful and continuous attention, democracy can become weak, inconsistent, betray its own principles, or even pave the way for authoritarian regimes. Recent history proves it. The state is both the product and the guarantor of democracy. And informed public debate is central to every democratic process. Access to quality information is therefore essential, because there can be no free will without the insight that allows citizens to make truly informed choices. Democratic discourse and individual freedoms require information that is accessible, verified, and well -documented - Information that fosters understanding of history, science, the complexity of the world, political dynamics, events, facts, and figures. Ignorance is the antithesis of democracy.
Democracy and information form an inseparable pair
Today, this link is under greater pressure than ever. The media landscape - both public and private - is experiencing profound cultural and structural uphea-
val. Culturally, an increasing number of people no longer see journalism as a service with added value, but as a constant stream of raw emotions and rapid updates that should always be freely available. Structurally, digitization, social media, and artificial intelligence are disrupting traditional media, undermining their authority, fragmenting their audiences, and dismantling their economic models. Mass manipulation has never been easier or more powerful. Disinformation has never been so pervasive. Amid the chaos of digital flows and the erosion of shared references, quality information is emerging as a defining pillar of 21st-century democracy. The future of democracy depends on its ability to produce and disseminate credible, rigorous journalism that enables open, dynamic, and well-informed public debate.
The Swiss laboratory
It is in this context that we see fundamental challenges to public service media mandates. Switzerland has, in its own way, served as a laboratory. Its political system is rooted in strong federalism and direct democracy, which allows citizens, political parties, or organized movements to challenge laws through referendums or propose new ones through initiatives. Only a few tens of thousands of validated signatures are required. In 2018, the Swiss population voted on whether to continue funding - and therefore whether to preserve - the public broadcasting service, SSR. The initiative was ultimately rejected by a wide margin (71%), but only after an intense campaign, dozens of public debates, and hundreds of impassioned articles. Five years later, the debate has returned. A new initiative, from the same political circles, now seeks to halve SSR’s budget by 2026. When opponents fail to win on principles, they target funding. The tactic is familiar.
The five-front model: a framework for understanding legitimacy
These highly charged campaigns revealed the main arguments deployed against public service broadcasting. Together with the EBU’s Compass Project, we analyzed similar trends across Europe and developed a basic model that identifies the five fronts from which pressure on public service media arises. This framework makes it possible to categorize attacks, understand their logic, and develop effective counter-narratives. It is offered to EBU members facing similar political pressures that threaten their missions and scope.
The first front is ideological. It mainly involves political actors on the right who accuse public broadcasters - especially newsrooms and debate programs - of leaning too far to the left. They also criticize the focus on so-called “woke” themes such as gender and inclusion, or environmental issues. Some voices, even within supportive circles, promote a more traditional view of public broadcasting: cultural programming only, with no ventures into new formats, especially digital. The criticism here is not only about airtime, but also about framing, tone, and perceived bias.
The second front is neoliberal, based on the idea of public-private subsidiarity. According to this view, public service media should withdraw as soon as the private sector is able to deliver a similar service. public service media is seen as unfair competition because of its mandatory public funding. The criticism is directed less at content than at the financing model. This position has become more pronounced with the expansion of public broadcasters’ digital offerings and their commercial ventures, including advertising.
The third front is digital, reflecting a “pick-and-choose” consumer culture. This group includes heavy users of media in all forms - broadcast, social media, streaming, gaming. Many younger people fall into this category. They do not necessarily oppose public broadcasters or their content - often, they appreciate it. But they resent having to pay for content they don’t personally use. For them, it’s a matter of principle.
The fourth front is about perceived inefficiency and waste. Critics here, often from neoliberal or populist backgrounds, accuse public broadcasters of mismanagement, excessive salaries, and bloated organizational structures. They compare public service media unfavorably to private companies, ignoring the public service obligations they carry—like territorial outreach, accessible programming for people with disabilities, and content in minority languages. These responsibilities are essential but rarely “economically efficient.”
The fifth front is radical and opposes everything. This is the most diffuse and difficult group to define. It includes anti-establishment, anti-authority, and conspiratorial movements that gained momentum after the COVID-19 pandemic and now thrive on social media. They believe public broadcasters suppress their
views and act as instruments of state control. They argue that even extreme opinions deserve equal media treatment and see public service media as part of a vast system of manipulation that benefits the ruling powers.
Deep dives and building credible counter-narratives
These five fronts manifest differently across national and regional contexts. To respond effectively, we must conduct in-depth field studies, including interviews and political/media market analyses, to tailor responses accordingly. Above all, it is vital to anticipate these storms and prepare counter-narratives that resonate. We can, for instance, respond to ideological attacks by clearly demonstrating editorial impartiality. We can counter neoliberal arguments by reaffirming the notion of public interest. To those who want an à-la-carte model of society, we can present solidarity - economic and social - as a core democratic value. Where accusations of inefficiency arise, we can show accountability through data and public reporting. And only transparency and independence can withstand the storm of conspiracy theories. These counter-narratives must be supported by clear, reliable, and measurable indicators - and such indicators do exist.
Understanding legitimacy as a strategic necessity
In the end, this is a question of legitimacy. As defined by Suchman (1995), legitimacy is the perception that an organization’s actions are appropriate, acceptable, or desirable within a socially constructed system of norms, values, and beliefs.
Performance alone is no longer enough to ensure the survival of public or semipublic institutions. Legitimacy is what enables them to endure - even in turbulent times.
Bend, if you must. But never break.
WE MUST SAVE PUBLIC SERVICE MEDIA TO CHANGE IT
VICTOR PICKARD
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
We need public service media more than ever—it’s too precious to let Trump defund it. But to live up to its democratic promise, we must support public service media to serve our needs: The US public service media system is under a multipronged attack from a hostile government. It’s under investigation by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for purportedly airing commercials, and by Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who recently led a congressional hearing—dubbed the “Anti-American Airwaves”—to target what she claims is public service media’s liberal bias. Meanwhile, rumors and threats abound that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has put funding for public broadcasting squarely in its crosshairs.
Government attacks on public service media are as old as Big Bird. Ever since Richard Nixon feuded with public broadcasting during its earliest days, every Republican administration, except Gerald Ford’s, has tried to cut public service media funding. But the severity of today’s attacks is different. The ruthless savagery that Donald Trump and Elon Musk are inflicting against what’s left of the US public sector suggests that this time they might succeed where previous efforts fell short. With these existential threats looming, now is an opportune moment to reflect on why we created public service media in the first place—and why it’s still needed today. Interrogating the history of US public service media also brings into focus the structural problems that were present since its inception: Because we never provided it with adequate, permanent, and insulated funding, the US public service media system has always been politically and economically vulnerable. This is a fixable problem that we must confront — after defending what we still have against trumped-up charges.
US public service media’s Little-Known History
American broadcasting developed very differently from that of most democracies. Instead of building a public system, the US decided in the early 1930s to cede
the public airwaves to commercial broadcasters, especially NBC and CBS, which aimed to maximize profit via advertising revenues. Although this decision wasn’t without controversy, attempts to carve out a viable public sector in the early days of radio were defeated by corporate interests and their allies.
Yet, media reformers—especially educators who believed that rampant commercialism would squander radio’s democratic potential—didn’t give up. They knew that a profit-driven broadcast media system could never provide for all of America’s informational and cultural needs. After decades of advocacy and activism—as well as support from major foundations—reformers incubated an alternative system devoted to educational broadcasting to provide what commercial media couldn’t.
Congress formalized this alternative network by passing the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, signed into law by President Johnson, which stated that it’s “in the public interest to encourage the development of programming that involves creative risks and that addresses the needs of unserved and underserved audiences, particularly children and minorities.” To ensure a buffer between the government and individual stations, the Act created the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), whose Board of Directors was made up of members from both major political parties. Congress funded the CPB which, in turn, funded individual member stations.
Strikingly, US public broadcasting’s revenue model differs from most of its global counterparts. Its original blueprint, based on an earlier Carnegie Commission report, called for an excise tax of up to 5 percent on television sets to generate a steady stream of revenue into a politically insulated trust fund. But that critical detail didn’t make it into the final 1967 Act. Despite President Johnson’s assurances that he’d provide public broadcasting with a plan for more long-term funding, that promise never materialized. Instead, we’ve inherited public service media’s current funding model: an annual appropriations process subject to constant budget fights and political jostling.
Insufficient public subsidies have forced stations to seek out various forms of underwriting from private sources, including corporations, to fund their programming. During the Reagan administration, Congress incentivized this reliance on
corporate support by directing public broadcasters to seek out nonfederal funding in place of public subsidies. Soon after, the FCC loosened restrictions on on-air advertisements, creating a slippery pathway toward “enhanced underwriting.” Although prevented from directly promoting product purchases, such messages can resemble commercials to casual listeners and viewers.
The growing dependence on corporate underwriting—comprising more than a third of NPR’s funding in recent years—makes public service media more reliant on the market and less easily distinguishable from commercial outlets. This predicament underscores a fundamental flaw in the US public service media model: The US government starves the system of public financing while pressuring it to operate like a business.
In the final analysis, only a permanent and secure source of federal funding can shelter public broadcasting from political attacks and economic precarity—and empower it to become the truly democratic media system that we need. But conservatives wish to further subject public service media to the discipline of market logics, internalizing the very commercial values the system was meant to oppose.
The Democratic Benefits of Public Service Media Around the World
By any measure, US government support for public service media is paltry. The $535 million that Congress currently allocates to the CPB covers roughly 1 percent of NPR’s and 15 percent of PBS’s budget. To even call this a public system is a misnomer; most funding for public service media comes from private sources in the form of individual donations, philanthropic grants, and corporate sponsorships.
The US public service media system is a global outlier in how little federal funding it receives. Comparative research shows that the US is almost literally off the chart relative to most democratic nations. US federal expenditures of less than $1.60 per capita pale in comparison to countries such as Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, which devote nearly $100 or more per capita to fund strong public service media systems such as the BBC.
Why does this matter? Research shows that access to public service media correlates with increased political knowledge and civic engagement and lower levels
of extremist views. Public service media are also more likely to provide diverse and critical media coverage of important social issues. Moreover, unlike commercial media that must privilege returns on investments, public service media are more likely to cover stories and engage audiences that aren’t profitable, thus reducing inequalities in news provision.
In these countries, public broadcasters are treated as vital democratic infrastructures, providing essential services that a commercial system will not. Indeed, research shows a positive correlation between the strength of public service media systems and the health of democracies. Conversely, “flawed democracies” such as the US tend to have weaker public service media systems that rely more on commercial support. This universal service mission is a key feature of all public service media systems, distinguishing them from their commercial counterparts. In the US, public service media reach more than 98 percent of the US population. Moreover, public broadcasters offer their programming to all members of society without the barrier of paywalls.
Public service media’s commitment to the public interest over commercial gain helps explain its relatively high levels of public trust. Survey data consistently demonstrate that public service media are highly trusted across the political spectrum—a fact that’s especially remarkable at a time when most media institutions are facing historically low levels of trust.
Public service Media’s Necessary Future
Beyond measurable democratic benefits, public service media outlets are uniquely positioned to offer a source of human connection and solidarity in an otherwise vast wasteland of corporate media fluff, clickbait, pink slime journalism, and news deserts. The sad irony is that defunding the CPB will disproportionately hurt individual stations in rural and conservative areas in states such as Alaska, Wyoming, Idaho, and Texas. Some of these stations depend on the CPB for as much as 25–50 percent of their funding.
These stations provide emergency communications and public safety alerts. During natural disasters, they are often the lone source of potentially life-saving information. As the climate crisis intensifies, the need for timely news about na-
tural disasters will become only more urgent. Indeed, the collapse of local commercial journalism illustrates the desperate need for a public alternative. With commercial media markets failing, public service media can serve as a readymade infrastructure to provide information and communication services in areas that aren’t only news deserts, but also often lack reliable broadband services. The local journalism crisis is an opportunity to redefine public service media’s democratic role in society to serve critical information needs, perhaps even combining local news gathering with municipal broadband services in multi-media hubs that I term “public service media centers.”
Thus far, we’ve barely begun to tap public service media’s potential. With better financial support, public service media outlets could ensure that dedicated journalists report on vitally important issues that have been abandoned as the newspaper industry collapses. This includes covering statehouses and school boards, investigating how the climate crisis is affecting local communities, and articulating policy solutions to pressing social problems. While public service media’s benefits to democracy are well-established, it’s also true that the US model is far from ideal. Ensuring that public service media are truly publicly owned and controlled will require radical democratization from the ground up. But before we can reimagine and revitalize public service media for the long term, we must defend what we have now.
Fortunately, increasing numbers of people are rallying to public service media’s defense. While a recent Pew Research Center poll shows that more Americans support than oppose federal funding for public service media, advocacy campaigns and activist groups are mobilizing to protect public investments in public service media. Strengthening public service media should be a core pillar of a pro-democracy movement that aims to ultimately transform our entire media landscape. But for public service media to serve as a bulwark against fascism, we must first fund it in accordance with global norms. Only then can we restructure the entire system—making it more resilient, democratic, and independent— to gradually replace failing commercial outlets and media oligarchs. This won’t happen tomorrow, but it must be firmly centered on our political horizon.
This article first appeared on April 15, 2025, in “The Nation” (https://www.thenation.com/article/society/public-broadcasting-media-democracy/). We thank the author for the kind permission to use it. It was translated with the help of the ORF-KI “AiDitor”.
BOTH SIDES: THE FAITH OF OUR TIMES
TIMOTHY SNYDER UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
Why does American television and press “both-sides” our politics? Why are such different presidential candidates presented as equally flawed? Why do the outrages of Trump, for example at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, lead to the humiliation of Biden?
Both-Sidesism is the habit of reducing the world into two perspectives, treating the two as fundamentally alike, and then ignoring or adjusting the data. One cause of this odd behavior is the ownership of media companies. Another is fear. But Both-Sidesism is not just a practice. It passes in the United States for a principle of journalism. Indeed, the dualism is almost unquestionable. Americans tends to take it for granted.
But it makes no sense. No data from the world around us indicates that two is the correct number of perspectives, nor that any two perspectives, once chosen, would be equal.
These are, rather, articles of faith. Once accepted, they enable the public performance we wrongly call “media.” Both-Sideism does not mediate but mystify. Its practitioners, called “anchors” or “publishers”, are shamans or priests. Mystifiers.
To be sure, “media” people do not think that they are mystifying. Nor are we in the habit of seeing them as practicing a religion.
But let us step back. Let us consider, for the sake of argument, that Both-Sidesism might be a dualist cult. Let us place its beliefs and practices in the context of the history of religion, and see what happens.
The number two has helped humans make sense of the world, from distant times to the present. It has had a powerful sway over human minds.
The number two can address the mystery of creation. In Indo-European societies, the universe sometimes began as a coupling of two entities, for example the Earth and the Sky. Or the first Being could be of two sexes, or twinned. In several myths, twin gods ride to the rescue of early humans in peril.
Duality can also help humans to frame the problem of evil, as in Manicheanism. Its founder Mani (enlightened by a spiritual twin) claimed that the universe was divided into darkness and light. Human action is then understood as struggle between these two forces.
The number two can also help us handle time. The Romans had a two-faced god, Janus, who was in charge of doors, passages, and thus transitions in general, beginnings and endings. He is very much present with us at the beginning of each year; January is named for him.
In Daoism we find something of all of the above in the notion of yin-yang: dark and light, chthonic and lively, female and male, wet and dry, which constantly join and give way to one another. Their interaction brings the world into being, and also enables natural and guides human action.
Both-Sidesism is another dualism. When confronting a phenomenon, for example an election or a party convention, the acolytes of Both Sides perform two steps. They reduce events to two personalities, then treat them as equal aspects of the two-headed divinity known as Both Sides.
Again: that there only two sides, and that the two aspects are the same, are unspoken articles of faith.
Once this initial ritual has been performed, the task of the priesthood is to sense disturbances that disrupt the apparent equality of the two aspects of Both Sides. The mythic utterances of the priests of Both Sides – bad journalism -- resolve the cultic tension that appears when a difference between the two aspects emerges. Equality is restored in a peculiar way, one that emphasizes the sacred character of the dual god, at the expense of understanding reality. The priests cannot undo the deeds of one aspect of Both Sides – for example a coup attempt or a call to deport millions. And if they described it accurately, they would only be deepening
the mystical inequality between Both Sides’ two aspects. They must normalize. Our Both-Sides priests correct the mystical imbalance with two mantric maneuvers. The first is to proclaim, groundlessly, that the perpetrator of the crime has learned his lesson, executed a pivot, turned a corner. The second is to humiliate the other side, the one that did nothing. And thus the mystical equilibrium between the two aspects of Both Sides is restored.
This normalization has consequences. If one of the two aspects of Both Sides seems to have done a great evil, the priests of Both Sides always ritually vituperate the other side. The price of the restoration of mystical equality is the rehabilitation of the criminal and the degradation of the blameless.
Our media people do not see it this way, of course. The restoration of the mystical equilibrium of Both Sides brings our priests a pious satisfaction, visible on the red faces of correspondents in Milwaukee this last week.
If pressed, the shamans of Both Sides insists that their dualistic dances are nothing other than correct method to describe the universe. The cult and its performance is protected from critique by the totemic terms “objectivity” and “balance.”
All shamans do this: they insist that their dogma must be our reality. But when we allow the cult of Both Sides to shape our own minds, ethical judgement and factual investigation disappear, and with them any chance for constitutional order and democracy.
Ethical judgement would involve a notion of right and wrong, which the activity of the priests erodes. The worse the evil of one side, the more artfully it must be forgiven, and the more viciously the other side must be berated. Believers in the cult of Both Sides experience this as moral action, whereas in fact the performative relativism erodes all morality.
Factual investigation would involve identifying other perspectives which the cult of Both Sides disregards. It would necessitate separating the two aspects Both Sides from each other and confronting their words with the facts of the world. To believers in the cult of Both Sides, it is a relief clothed in righteousness never to have to perform such labor.
Earlier dualistic faiths were no more outlandish than our own cult of Both Sides. Indeed, they had something to say about foundational issues. The Indo-European, Near Eastern and East Asian beliefs, to which I briefly referred above, generated stories about the world that inspired philosophy and science. The cult of Both Sides is the dogmatic distraction from the bloody sacrifice of a republic.
PS: I want to be clear: this essay concerns the dominant both-sides ritual in the American “media”, and not the work of actual investigative journalists, who follow very different methods, and whose work stands at the basis of what we now about Trump’s ongoing attempt at regime change. I dedicated Road to Unfreedom to reporters as “the heroes of our time.” They are.
This article first appeared on July 21, 2024, at https://snyder.substack.com/ and is reprinted with the author‘s permission.
SEND THE TRUTH WHILE YOU STILL CAN
THOMAS LASCHYK VOLKSVERPETZER.DE
Far–right parties have a clear strategy: they attack, among other things, the independent press–especially public service broadcasters–to silence critical voices and ultimately gain control over discourse and public opinion. These attacks take many forms. Recently, Vienna’s FPÖ leader Dominik Nepp demanded (1) that the daily newspaper “Der Standard” be stripped of press subsidies after it published critical reports. Donald Trump, whom, for example, Timothy Snyder from the University of Toronto calls a fascist (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/ dispatches/what–does–it–mean–that–donald–trump–is–a–fascist), even claimed that critical reporting about him was “illegal” (2) . In Germany, attacks on press freedom have long been part of the AfD’s repertoire. The party delegitimizes established media as the “system press” or “lying press” and complains about supposed censorship – while at the same time excluding unwelcome journalists from its own party events (3). In fact, vehement rejection of public broadcasting has been one of the AfD’s core concerns since its founding (4). In Thüringen (Germany), for example, the AfD under the fascist Höcke has repeatedly called for the termination of all broadcasting treaties and the abolition of public service broadcasting (5). By complaining about “restricted freedom of expression” while simultaneously excluding critical press, the AfD immunizes itself in the eyes of its supporters against any criticism, no matter how justified. Far–right parties want to dictate how they are reported on. The defense of press and freedom of expression must therefore be waged primarily against these attacks.
But instead of standing united against this, many media outlets try to take the wind out of the right–wing’s sails by accommodating them, reporting more on the topics they set, and trying to avoid the next shitstorm by not reporting in a way that could upset them. This strategy of appeasement has fatal consequences: a creeping rightward shift in the media landscape. One study showed that migration and asylum seekers are disproportionately associated with crime and violence (6) – another study showed that migration is presented as a problem or threat (7). Another found that the media not only write disproportionately about
violence, especially knife attacks, but also focus almost exclusively on the minority of non–German suspects (8). Instead of reporting objectively about refugees, most media have tended to adopt the distorted portrayals of right–wing populist actors. Even in factually correct reports, framing and selection already reinforce perceptions. Although a study shows (9) that more migration does not lead to more crime, this false connection is hardly questioned in the media anymore. Racist attacks, which occur almost every other day (10), and the fact that far–right crimes have reached a new record (11), are neglected. Media scholar Thomas Hestermann gave a damning verdict: “The German mainstream media classify violent crime almost exactly as the AfD does.” (12) Through constant waves of outrage and pressure on editorial offices (“The lying press is hiding XY!”), they shift the journalistic focus in their direction. Other important topics also suffer: According to a study, climate issues were underrepresented in public broadcasting from 2007 to 2022 (13). In recent years, it has probably gotten even worse – in formats like the TV debate, less than two minutes were devoted to climate issues (14). Yet, according to surveys, four out of five Germans trust the domestic media offering–public broadcasting by far the most (15). There is therefore no reason to bend one’s own journalistic line for the sake of the far right. That only destroys existing trust without winning back the right–wingers.
The task of public broadcasting is to report objectively and factually–and objective does not mean giving every piece of disinformation the same platform. The dilemma becomes particularly clear when dealing with far–right voices in talk shows and panel discussions. Every invitation is a success for the extremists. No matter how sharply an AfD politician is confronted in a program, their supporters celebrate every appearance as a triumph; out–of–context clips full of unchallenged disinformation get millions of views on social media (16). Live, no fake can be properly corrected, because when challenged, someone like Alice Weidel simply says: No, that’s not true. A note that there will be a fact check online somewhere later interests no one anymore (17). Studies confirm this effect: one investigation found that TV interviews and appearances by far–right actors lead to greater approval of their views among the public (18). Of course, one can argue that “exposing” fascists or other liars is not the task of such formats. But then they may also fundamentally fail in their journalistic mission. If such formats become free PR for enemies of democracy instead of fulfilling their role as the fourth estate, and we simply accept that, we are sawing off the branch of press freedom ourselves.
Out of a misguided sense of balance, anti–democratic, extremist positions are treated as a legitimate “side” in the debate and thus amplified. Whether it’s about COVID, climate, or crime: if the views of the scientific consensus or even the majority are underrepresented, and instead anti–democratic narratives are given space, something is wrong. Talk shows or interviews with far–right extremists or populists should no longer be broadcast live. A time delay allows misleading claims to be countered directly in the program with fact checks and counterstatements. Public broadcasters should stop equating democratic consensus with extremist positions. Not every topic has two legitimate “sides”, especially not when one is based on fakes or the abolition of democracy. Public broadcasting should confidently address topics that are underrepresented in public debate, instead of passively following the logic of outrage. Simply quoting claims without context or fact–checking is not journalism. That’s PR. If headlines only feature the topics and (false) claims of the far right, even the best journalism is useless. Especially if there is no fact check or context, and a coup attempt like in the USA is described as “controversial” or a “constitutional crisis.” As if that were normal.
Instead of constantly discussing the most outrageous claims, broadcasters should increasingly focus on substantive issues that have been overshadowed by culture wars–such as social justice, climate, education, or constructive solutions for migration. Precisely because the aim is to dominate their favorite topics and suppress other discourses, public broadcasting must fill this gap. More reports on the consequences of far–right violence, on the real benefits of migration, for example how it stabilizes social security systems (19), on scientific facts about climate change–all the things that have no place in the theater of outrage. Oh, and in times of social media, it should become standard practice to provide source links where possible. Verifiability increases trust and makes it easier to find studies and primary sources.
Our media bear a special responsibility to withstand the pressure of anti–democratic forces. Attacks from the right aim to intimidate journalism and ultimately bring it into line–public broadcasting must actively counter this. Because it will be the first victim of the purge if the far right seizes power. Have the courage to stand up for truth and democracy! I want my journalists to fight for the truth, hold the powerful accountable, and defend democracy–not stand timidly beside fascism and comment on it as “controversial.” Send the truth while you still can.
References
1 https://orf.at/stories/3382085/
2 https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/14/media/trump–media–speech/index.html
3 https://www.rnd.de/politik/gerichtsbeschluss–afd–darf–journalisten–nicht–von–akkreditierung–ausschlies– sen–RSTHYRXISBEZXOFY3NKR6XLZSE.html
4 https://www.nachdenken–im–handgemenge.de/de/article/4209.grundfunk–statt–vielfalt–wie–die–afd–den–%C3%B6ffentlich–rechtlichen–rundfunk–radikal.html
5 https://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/medien/afd–in–thueringen–droht–mdr–mit–kuendigung–dieser–bleibt–gelassen–19876807.html
6 https://www.stiftung–mercator.de/de/publikationen/fuenf–jahre–medienberichterstattung–ueber–flucht–und–migration/
7 https://migrant–integration.ec.europa.eu/library–document/die–unsichtbaren–berichterstattung–ueber–eingewanderte–und–gefluechtete_de
8 https://mediendienst–integration.de/fileadmin/Dateien/Expertise_Berichterstattung_ueber_Messerangrif– fe_Thomas_Hestermann.pdf
9 https://www.ifo.de/pressemitteilung/2025–02–18/mehr–auslaender–erhoehen–die–kriminalitaetsrate–nicht
10 https://www.migazin.de/2024/04/11/sachsen–anhalt–hat–dramatisches–rassismus–problem/#:~:text=Die%20Mobile%20Opferberatung%20hat%20f%C3%BCr,38%20Jugendliche%20 und%2020%20Kinder
11 https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/rechtsextreme–straftaten–106.html
12 https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2025–03/angriff–mannheim–kein–migrationshintergrund–deutscher–medien–afd
13https://www.ard–media.de/fileadmin/user_upload/media–perspektiven/pdf/2022/2212_Tschoetschel_Schumann_Roloff_Brueggemann_.pdf
14https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2025–02/tv–duell–bundestagswahl–merz–scholz–analyse
15 https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/gesellschaft/vertrauen–glaubwuerdigkeit–medien–100.html
16 https://www.volksverpetzer.de/aktuelles/alice–weidel–zerstoert–caren–miosga/
17 https://www.volksverpetzer.de/faktencheck/wahlarena–fixed–video/
18 https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/urhxy/
19 https://www.iwkoeln.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Studien/Kurzberichte/PDF/2024/IW–Kurzbericht_2024–Bev%C3%B6lkerungsentwicklung–Migration.pdf
ON THE IMPORTANCE AND ROLE OF PUBLIC SERVICE MEDIA IN DEMOCRACY
JÜRGEN BETZ, ERIKA BOCK-ROSENTHAL INITIATIVE CIRCLE FOR PUBLIC BROADCASTING COLOGNE E.V. (IÖR)
Public broadcasting was deliberately established after World War II and the Nazi regime to promote the (then newly developing) democracy. The intentionally federal organization is meant to prevent media uniformity. This remains unchanged to this day. As the Federal Constitutional Court (BVerfG) has repeatedly stated, public broadcasting continues to hold this function for democracy, even more so than ever.
According to § 26 of the State Media Treaty (MedStV), public broadcasting is tasked with fulfilling the democratic, social, and cultural needs of society. It should promote international understanding, social cohesion, and the overall societal discourse in the federal and state levels. Its mission is to offer culture, education, information, and advice, as well as entertainment that corresponds to the public broadcasting profile. This mission description aligns with the requirements that the BVerfG has consistently emphasized.
Especially in current times, public broadcasting as an independent medium is particularly important and more than ever required to promote democracy, fulfill its broad mandate comprehensively, and actively oppose anti-democratic populism and defend against attacks on freedom of opinion and media, which are particularly threatened by so-called social networks like X, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok.
From the perspective of the IÖR, public broadcasting can and must do much more than it currently does. Specifically:
1. Raise awareness of the value of public broadcasting
The awareness in society and the population of the importance of public broadcasting must be sharpened and repeatedly emphasized. This is partly the res-
ponsibility of public broadcasting itself, but also of media policy, which can do much more here and should not primarily focus on stabilizing or even reducing broadcasting fees.
2. Actively advocate for democracy and its values
In times of increasing right-wing radicalism and anti-constitutional efforts, public broadcasting and its journalists must be guardians of democracy. They also have the task of making anti-democratic developments visible and contextualizing them. The often misunderstood appeal by Hans-Joachim Friedrichs, that a journalist should not align with any cause, not even a good one, does not apply here. Journalists of public broadcasting have the constitutional mandate to defend and protect democracy. As Carlo Schmid stated in the mid-1950s, democracy should not be weak but resilient and have the courage to be intolerant towards those who want to use democracy to destroy it.
The appeal made by the first Hessian Prime Minister, Christian Stock, in 1948 at the founding of Hessischer Rundfunk to journalists remains unchanged; it could not be better formulated today: “Hüten Sie aber auch den Äther, eines der heiligsten Güter eines Volkes; vor allem die Freiheit, unter der Sie selbst arbeiten können!
Schenken Sie dem Geist der Freiheit und Demokratie Gehör. Wenn Sie einem Geist Gehör schenken, der Freiheit und Demokratie töten will, müssen Sie wissen, dass Sie sich und Ihrem Volke damit den Untergang bereiten. Sie dienen keiner Partei, Sie dienen keiner Sekte, Sie dienen keiner Gruppe von Parteien, Sie dienen dem ganzen Volke. Ihr schärfster Kampf muss daher denen gelten, die die demokratische Freiheit und den Frieden der Welt zu stören versuchen.“ (English translation: “Guard the ether, one of the most sacred goods of a people; above all, the freedom under which you can work! Listen to the spirit of freedom and democracy. If you listen to a spirit that wants to kill freedom and democracy, you must know that you are preparing your own and your people‘s downfall. You serve no party, no sect, no group of parties, you serve the entire people. Your fiercest fight must therefore be against those who try to disturb democratic freedom and world peace.”)
Public broadcasting, as free independent broadcasting, must also do much more in its offerings to convey its function and significance as part of the backbone for a free democratic society; it has a co-responsibility for the functioning of democracy. This can f.e. be achieved through suitable programs on the function of
representative democracy, the importance of compromise as a problem-solving competence in a democracy, and the separation of powers as its basis. Suitable documentaries conveying background knowledge, also with a view to dictatorships and the Nazi and DDR-Regime, own short spots and trailers on television and radio pro-democracy, through publications, through socio-political and media-political conferences and events, also in conjunction with suitable institutions, are appropriate. The topic of democracy and its significance can also be addressed in the fictional area.
Public broadcasting must be a public service for the democratic public and support democratic culture of debate. As media scientist Prof. Pörksen aptly put it, a “media democracy must not become a democracy of outrage.” Therefore, public broadcasting should not ask what democracy can do for it, but rather what it can do for democracy.
3. Highlight own achievements
Positive self-promotion in many different forms by highlighting its extensive services for 60 cents a day is equally important. This includes the previously missing targeted cross-promotion on television for the overall offering of public broadcasting and its diverse offerings, which many people are unaware of. Cross-promotion is also very important in radio and digital offerings. People need to know what is available in the overall offering; especially the niche programs fulfill the mandate well but are hardly known.
4. Fulfill the mandate more comprehensively
Given the complex and sometimes confusing global situation, there is an immense need for high-quality, economically and politically independent journalism. Therefore, public broadcasting must fulfill its mandate comprehensively, for example, by
• providing more information, documentaries, background reports, and analyses on current topics on television at attractive times between 7 and 10 PM, which are also advertised through trailers.
• offering more foreign reporting to understand the global world. So far, the Southern Hemisphere, where over 80% of people live, plays almost no role in the program. One “Weltspiegel” and one foreign journal per week on ARD and ZDF are too few.
• practicing constructive journalism and reporting on what is positive and successful instead of primarily on negatives, disputes, and conflicts in the world and society. The “good news” newsletter already shows a lot of positive and achieved things.
• building media bridges in the face of deepening divides and growing polarization and division in society and reflecting the diversity of existing opinions; helping to secure our common value foundation and creating a counterweight to algorithm-driven commercial social networks. “Freedom of opinion” is not guaranteed without limits, as US Vice President Vance apparently believes, while simultaneously wanting to ban non-government-approved opinions from the public.
• fulfilling the mandate for integration, i.e., promoting coexistence in a pluralistic society through a culture of understanding, dialogue, and discourse.
• rethinking talk show formats. The current ones often provide little insight for viewers because the same guests are repeatedly invited and the same topics discussed. The many talk rounds before the 2025 federal election are a telling example and have received much criticism. Many important topics outside of Germany and Europe are hardly discussed in the talk rounds. It would be sensible to invite citizens more often, who often ask better questions than some moderators. More scientists would also be good, as they provide more information and background knowledge.
• reducing the number of increasingly numerous crime dramas and making room for the previously mentioned contributions and depicting less violence in crime dramas; a demand from many viewers from the ARD Future Dialogue 2021. The money saved can produce many documentaries and informational programs.
• ending the competitive thinking between ARD and ZDF in programming quickly and cooperating significantly more.
To finance the costs for fulfilling the above-mentioned tasks, which are in addition to the status quo, ARD and ZDF should also consider reducing expenses for sports broadcasts and the multitude of highly paid sports experts, which account for up to 10% of the total budget.
5. Intensify committee oversight
The MedStV has deliberately strengthened the tasks and competencies of the su-
pervisory committees. The committees of ARD and ZDF have now adopted quality guidelines for the offerings according to § 31 of the MedStV. These must now be applied promptly to check whether they are being observed by those responsible for the programs and whether the goals and tasks mentioned under 4 are being achieved.
6. Better fulfill the educational mandate
The mandate of public broadcasting explicitly includes education, see § 26 MedStV. This is especially true for the younger generation. The offerings mentioned under 4 would also better fulfill the educational mandate than before. Students should be informed about democracy and its values early on, especially about the separation of powers, freedom of opinion, freedom of the press and media, academic freedom, protection of human rights, equality, and much more. In an increasingly complex and globalized world and in view of challenges such as digitalization and growing polarization, value transmission plays a key role. In addition to subject-specific content, young people must also be taught values such as respect, responsibility, tolerance, and solidarity. This makes a decisive contribution to a sustainable society. Here, public broadcasting could actively support with its competencies and contributions.
7. Strengthen journalism
More educational offerings for journalists are needed to understand and contextualize the increasingly complex topics of our time. More specialized journalists are also needed to legally and economically assess and evaluate the potential consequences of proposed political measures, especially at the German and European levels. In political interviews and talk shows, journalists must follow up if their questions are not answered or only evasively answered. If terms are used by interviewees that have a special meaning in the right-wing radical context, a direct translation must occur. If terms are “hijacked”, it must be checked whether a quasi-quotation is sensible or direct rejection. The term “freedom of opinion” is an example, which has a completely different meaning in our Basic Law than in the speech of an extremist. In any case, good preparation of interviews and moderations with persons and parties that do not stand on the ground of the Basic Law is important; this must also be made clear. The various programs on ARD and ZDF before the 2025 federal election have shown where the deficits in journalism lie and have rightly received much criticism because only a few of
the current problems and challenges were addressed and many questions from politicians were not answered. It must – see Stock‘s quote – be clearly and courageously stated that certain political positions are right-wing extremist or unconstitutional. Lies must also be clearly labeled as such and not simply left standing.
8. Engage with youth
Engaging with youth and conveying the values of democracy, also in suitable form on social media channels, is important. Youth media days are a very good instrument for this, as ARD plans again on November 12, 2025.
Cooperation with schools is equally important to convey and promote democracy early on. Public broadcasting can contribute to this; there are already very good programs, for example on ARTE, that can be used. A cooperation with the project “Journalism Makes School” would also be sensible.
9. Promote media literacy
Public broadcasting should also promote media literacy through suitable programs and other media educational offerings, also in its regional studios, especially for children and adolescents, their parents, and teachers. Without media literacy, individuals are helplessly exposed to today‘s media world, especially the so-called social networks. There are already good contributions from public broadcasting on this, and much more information should be provided about them. Here, cooperation with schools, school authorities, and educational institutions is important. More proximity to the audience, for example, could also contribute to media literacy. If an OB van is present at city festivals, it would surely be possible to show interested people not only the technology but also what is recorded and how it is reported, i.e., how a program is created.
10. Expose fake news
Our time and our opinion formation are increasingly influenced by fake news, algorithm-driven one-sided information, especially through social networks, which must be exposed and explained. Media must not be neutral, but truthful; obvious lies must also be called out as such.
What is still missing, especially on television, is an immediate exposure and debunking of false claims in the same program, whether through corresponding
overlays or immediate clarification and confrontation of the interview partner by the moderators. It is not enough to refute false claims only after a program and only online.
Here, public broadcasters should play a more active role and not restrict themselves to online platforms. A joint editorial team of ARD, ZDF, DLR, and DW could act more effectively here and help avoid double or even multiple work in uncovering false information.
11. Extra program
Unfortunately, corrections often go unnoticed, while sensational data, outrageous claims, or astonishing images remain in memory. Therefore, consideration should be given to developing a proper small program in a good time slot. “The most false number of the week” could be illustrated there, or the most outrageous lie story. “Alternative truths” and conspiracy narratives could be depicted with AI, good caricatures, or actors. AI fakes could be spun forward and backward. It should also be fun to watch such a program.
12. Participation of public broadcasting in the development of a European independent, non-profit social network as a counterpart and alternative to X, Instagram, TikTok, and others
In March 2025, a large alliance of 75 civil society initiatives, organizations, associations, and alliances was formed in Germany and rightly pointed out that the mentioned American and Chinese platforms deliberately ignore European regulations like the Digital Services Act, even with the support of the Trump administration. The alliance, under the title “Protect Democracy, Promote the Common Good: Online Platforms Need Control”, wrote to Messrs. Merz, Klingbeil, and Söder, demanding that they advocate for online platforms to promote the common good and democratic discourse and for a public-interest-oriented digital platform to be built and strengthened at the European level to create an alternative to the existing, increasingly dangerous American and Chinese platforms. Here, public broadcasting should actively participate in its own interest, given its co-responsibility for our democracy, in collaboration with the European Broadcasting Union, and possibly take the lead in developing such a platform and its regulations.
LEGAL MEASURES TO IMPROVE THE RESILIENCE OF THE GERMAN PUBLIC BROADCASTING SYSTEM
BERND HOLZNAGEL UNIVERSITY OF MÜNSTER
1. Public Broadcasting Facing New Challenges
Populist movements are currently on the rise in Europe, evident in Germany through the electoral successes of the Alternative for Germany (AfD). In the 2025 federal election, the party secured 20.8 percent of the votes, placing second behind the CDU. In the five eastern German states, the party took first place. Except for Berlin, the AfD won almost all constituencies in East Germany. The AfD views the public broadcasting system as a “structurally, personally, and financially closely networked apparatus with the established parties”, using its power “deliberately for opinion-making up to manipulation” (AfD election program for the federal election, p. 174). In its current form, “public broadcasting is no longer up-to-date. It must be fundamentally reformed, streamlined, and de-ideologized. The AfD is vehemently advocating for a sustainable structural reform of public broadcasting, whose sole task should be a fee-free basic supply of information, culture, and regional programs.” Occasionally, there are calls to simply abolish public broadcasting. Against this backdrop, it is not surprising that a discussion has begun on how public broadcasting can be better protected against such restructuring plans through legal means.
2. Federal Media System as a Bulwark
The Federal Republic is a federal state. The broadcasting system follows this. The broadcasting corporations, such as the Nordwestdeutsche Rundfunk (NWDR), founded shortly after the war by the Allies, initially had a program mandate related only to the respective occupation zone. This was modeled on the BBC to ensure the necessary independence from politics. This initially met with fierce criticism from some state governments. The federal government also attempted in the early 1960s to gain more influence over the broadcasting system. Chancellor Adenauer advocated for a nationwide television program called “DeutschlandFernsehen.” This endeavor failed at the Federal Constitutional Court. The court clarified that public broadcasting is solely committed to the goal of diversity. The
federal states are responsible for broadcasting legislation. Therefore, the federal government is prohibited from broadcasting an independent program. An exception applies only to foreign broadcasting, the program of Deutsche Welle. This first broadcasting judgment is considered the “Magna Carta” of the constitutional broadcasting order in Germany. Since then, the Federal Constitutional Court has played a central role in shaping the broadcasting system.
A federal media system is inherently a significant obstacle for autocratic political movements if they intend to take over media power at the national level. In this respect, the right lessons have been learned from Nazi rule. At that time, the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda could effectively use radio for its political goals. This would no longer be possible under the current constitutional order.
3. Cooperative Federalism as a Point of Attack
•
State Treaties Between
the States as a Basis
To fundamentally restructure or even abolish public broadcasting, one can only proceed at the level of the federal states. The public broadcasting system is particularly fragile when it relies on cooperation between the states. Agreements between the states are secured by concluding binding state treaties. The broadcasts of ZDF are based on a state treaty concluded by all 16 federal states. The programs of the multi-state institutions MDR, rbb, NDR, and SWR are also based on the relevant state treaties of the affected states.
State treaties are enacted in a two-step process. First, an agreement on the contract text by the affected state governments is required. Then, the state parliaments must approve it before the state treaty is published in the state law gazettes. The contract content thus attains the status of law in all states.
This system of cooperation and coordination is demanding. It assumes that the states reach a viable compromise among themselves. It is also assumed that the state parliaments approve a contract text they can hardly influence content-wise. This can be expected to cause discontent. For many members of parliament, it is a burden to only be able to perform a kind of notarial certification of the negotiation result. Nevertheless, the states have managed to negotiate and enact a large number of state treaties in recent decades. This practice is an expression
of the rule of the “parties of the center.” A trend reversal only began when increasing fragmentation and polarization of the party system became apparent.
• Dispute Over Contribution Increase
The fragility of this consensus-based system became widely apparent for the first time during the debate over the contribution increase in 2020. After 15 federal states had already approved the necessary financing state treaty, it became apparent that there would be no majority approval in the state parliament of Saxony-Anhalt. Only the Federal Constitutional Court ordered an increase in the broadcasting fee to 18.36 euros per month, which applies to every household. According to the court, a deviation from the proposals of the Commission for the Review and Determination of the Financial Needs of Broadcasting Corporations (KEF) is only possible with the unanimous consent of all states. The state financing guarantee obligation lies with the states as a federal responsibility community, with each state being a responsible party.
There is also no consensus among the federal states for an increase in the contribution to 18.94 euros, which KEF proposed for the current contribution period. Some institutions have therefore filed another constitutional complaint to enforce their constitutional right to functional financing. It remains to be seen how the Federal Constitutional Court will decide this time. Proposals to amend the financing state treaty so that the broadcasting fee can be set without parliamentary approval have so far failed. Such an endeavor would again require the consent of all federal states. It remains to be seen whether the Federal Constitutional Court will provide groundbreaking answers to this question in its eagerly awaited ruling on the current contribution level. In the past, the court has resolved media policy blockades on the part of the federal states with the help of constitutional law.
• Termination of State Treaties Between the States
With the election results of the AfD in East Germany, there is a real possibility that the party will be part of the government in individual federal states in the future or at least participate in it. This can have immediate consequences for the continued existence of public broadcasting, as state treaties can be unilaterally terminated. Therefore, no joint declaration of the contracting states is required. Most state treaties contain termination clauses that provide for a notice period of
one to two years. Unlike the conclusion of the contract, its termination does not require parliamentary approval. It can be unilaterally declared by the government of a federal state.
Various measures are being discussed to protect the stability of public broadcasting (for details, see Tobias Mast, Archive for Press Law 2024, 469-479). Initially, the introduction of a parliamentary reservation for the termination of state treaties could be considered. Then, a mere letter from a prime minister would no longer suffice for termination. The process would have to be discussed in parliament, making a “hidden” exit before the public more difficult. Longer termination periods could also prevent sudden political upheavals, allowing for a broader debate. In state treaties involving multiple states, the unanimity principle could be replaced by a majority principle. The consequences of a termination are also not fully clarified. For multi-state institutions, for example, it is questionable whether the termination of a state treaty merely leads to the exit of one federal state or whether it can dissolve the entire institution. These proposals have not yet been taken up by politicians. The western federal states currently see no need for action because the election results of the AfD are considered manageable. In the eastern federal states, no political majority can apparently be reached for these proposals.
4. Restructuring or Abolition of a Broadcasting Institution
• Takeover of Management
Another entry point for restructuring a broadcasting institution arises if its management can be politically determined or controlled. An important safeguard against this is that a state government is not authorized to appoint the director. The election of the director is instead the task of the broadcasting councils. The broadcasting council consists of representatives of social groups listed in detail in the law. The so-called state bench, which also includes party representatives, is limited to one-third of the members. In practice, these regulations significantly limit the influence of extreme political movements on the selection of management personnel.
However, the director themselves has considerable power, which could potentially be used for a populist agenda. The broadcasting councils can remove the ma-
nagement person. However, the usually required 2/3 majority is not easily achieved. The supervision of the state chancelleries of the states is weak due to the principle of state distance from broadcasting. It only includes legal supervision. This means that only violations of applicable law can be objected to. Sanctions for misconduct can be imposed through liability law. However, this only applies retrospectively and can therefore only be used to a limited extent against the implementation of a populist agenda.
A possible alternative to the director model would be the introduction of a collegial constitution, where not a single person but, for example, a multi-member directorate takes over management. A power balance of the individual actors would have to be enshrined in the directorate‘s rules of procedure. This option has not yet been discussed as a means against politically motivated influence. There is a need for conceptual catch-up here.
• Abolition by State Broadcasting Law
The most far-reaching question is whether a state parliament could abolish a broadcasting institution by simple law. A conceivable countermeasure would be to explicitly anchor public broadcasting in the respective state constitution. Some federal states have already done this to ensure the existence of their state broadcasting institutions. Abolishing public broadcasting would then only be possible through a constitutional amendment, which could only be achieved with a qualified majority.
5. Conclusion
In Germany, there is no unified strategy to make public broadcasting more resilient against populist challenges than before. This is probably also because there is a particular reliance on the persuasive power of the Federal Constitutional Court‘s decisions. The Karlsruhe court has set guidelines for the goals, organization, and financing of public broadcasting in numerous resolutions and judgments. In practice, they represent the central obstacle at the state level to a fundamental change or even the abolition of public broadcasting.
However, the further question arises as to whether all major political actors will continue to respect the Federal Constitutional Court‘s judgments in the future.
In times of strong populist movements, this can no longer be taken for granted. Moreover, the resilience of the Federal Constitutional Court itself is not unlimited. The recent safeguards to strengthen its independence in the Basic Law are therefore very welcome. By strengthening the Federal Constitutional Court as an independent instance, public broadcasting also indirectly benefits from more effective protection through constitutional law against political influence.
WHEN POPULISM BECOMES POPULAR:
SWITZERLAND AS A TESTING GROUND FOR THE ABOLITION OF PUBLIC
SERVICE BROADCASTING
LISA MARCHON & SANIJA AMETI OPERATION LIBERO
1. Introduction
Switzerland has no common language, no common religion, no common culture. What holds the “Swiss people” together as a nation is their shared will. Switzerland is the classic case of a “nation of will”, whose republican idea forms the basis for a pluralistic democracy. It is based on the premise that no one possesses the absolute truth in political matters 1, which means that all members of the nation of will have the same right to express themselves. This presupposes that all citizens are recognized as equally free and are granted the same participatory rights.2
As an information hub, public service broadcasting (PSB) is a central infrastructure of the nation of will and thus of democratic and pluralistic society. The constitutionally enshrined mandate of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SRG) “to contribute to education and cultural development, to the free formation of opinion and to entertainment [and…] to present events appropriately and to reflect the diversity of opinions” 3 forms the basis on which participatory rights in a pluralistic democracy can be exercised. Precisely for this reason, the SRG is an obstacle to anti-democratic forces: The idea of right-wing populists that they are the sole legitimate representatives of a fictitious, supposedly homogeneous people 4 are diametrically opposed to the nation of will in a pluralistic democracy.
The political pressure on the SRG is not an isolated Swiss phenomenon, but part of an international development: Anti-democratic forces are systematically try-
1 Kelsen, 1929.
2 Möllers, 2008.
3 BV, Art. 93 Abs. 2.
4 Mudde, 2004.
ing to delegitimize public service media in order to strengthen alternative—often party-controlled—disinformation channels. Growing geopolitical tensions are intensifying hybrid warfare. In this environment, autocratic influences use disinformation to deliberately divide civil society and undermine trust in democratic institutions. In view of the disinformation attacks that are carried out daily on the liberal democracies of Europe, PSB is not only of the highest relevance for democracy, but also for security policy.
This article shows how right-wing populists have succeeded in deliberately shifting the discourse in Switzerland through popular initiatives to antagonize public service broadcasting, how civil society can resist, and how preemptive obedience to the demands of right-wing populists sustainably weakens PSB and democracy.
2. Switzerland as a Testing Ground for Right-Wing Populist Narratives
To understand the attacks from the far right on PSB, one must understand the dynamics between right-wing populism and the democratic system, as well as the struggle for interpretive authority. The right-wing populist longing for the end of PSB is about control and the victory of their own narrative. This longing is not unique to the Swiss People’s Party (SVP) and Switzerland—but the interpretive power of the right-wing populist SVP is exceptional.
Since 1999, the SVP has been by far the strongest faction in parliament. This enduring position of power has allowed the SVP to weave identity-forming national narratives over decades that still shape Switzerland’s self-image today.5 An analysis of 14,000 documents from the last 40 years—party programs, speeches, parliamentary debates, etc.—has shown that right-wing parties, above all the SVP, have dominated the narrative discourse since the 1990s and linked it to their political agenda. 6 They occupy the narrative of Switzerland as a defensive, independent, and freedom-loving Alpine country that defends itself against threats and thus secures lasting prosperity. The narrative thrives on demarcation from the foreign in order to fulfill its identity-forming function. Terms such as “asy-
5 Pro Futuris, 2023, S. 3
6 Pro Futuris, 2023.
lum chaos” or “overforeignization” paint a picture of constant danger. This word painting creates a distorted perception of reality.
Through their constant repetition in public discourse, right-wing populist narratives are slowly internalized, adopted, and declared as universal reality by democratic parties and society: also known as the phenomenon of “collective norm devaluation” (“kollektive Normabwertung”).7 Anyone who wants to oppose this policy must correct the narrative before political measures can be taken on a factual basis. In this way, the political discourse for the entire society shifts to the right. A peculiarity of Swiss democracy further facilitates the shift in discourse: popular initiatives.
Anyone who collects 100,000 signatures for a political concern within 18 months can force a national referendum. Even though only just under 11% of initiatives have been accepted by voters since 1891, initiatives are worthwhile despite their high resource requirements8, even if they are not accepted. In addition to the potential constitutional amendment, they fulfill another, actual main purpose: shifting the discourse. Initiatives make it possible to publicly stake out a certain discourse framework until the vote, often for several years. The opponents of the initiative always operate within the framework of the initiative and thus act defensively. Initiatives are actively used by the SVP as an instrument for shifting discourse, especially where the fault lines of the nation of will run: in European, migration, and media policy.
3. Lessons from the No-Billag Campaign 2018: A Strong Civil Society Can Counter Right-Wing Populist Narratives
The system of direct democracy, as Switzerland knows it, presupposes that citizens are sufficiently informed about the scope of their decision. PSB is a powerful instrument of information dissemination to see through and filter populist narratives. As such, it is the “antidote to polarization.” This is shown by a report from the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which analyzed the correlation bet-
7 The term was coined by social scientist Naika Foroutan and describes how norms and reality are pulled apart as right-wing populist forces gain strength; see Foroutan, 2019. 8 Bundeskanzlei, 2025.
ween the strength of public service broadcasting and the quality of a democracy.9
The first major attack on Swiss PSB came in 2018 with the so-called “No-Billag Initiative.” The initiative aimed to abolish reception fees for radio and television in Switzerland, and thus effectively the SRG. Out of the conviction that the SRG, as the mouthpiece and infrastructure of the nation of will, should not be silenced, the political movement Operation Libero campaigned against the No-Billag Initiative in 2018.
The great challenge was to break the right-wing populists’ dominance of the discourse, who had occupied the narrative of “compulsory fees” for years. Four months before the vote, polls predicted the initiative would pass.
Operation Libero entered the campaign with an unusual slogan: “We don’t care about the SRG.” Then they explained: “What we do care about is our democracy, which is to be dealt a devastating blow by the No-Billag Initiative.” The strategy of the campaign was thus clear: It was not about the nitty-gritty and not about how high the fees for public broadcasting should be down to the last cent, or whether it makes sense for feel-good television to compete with educational journalism in households across the country. Rather, it was about the fact that PSB is one of the central pillars of our modern democracy and the information supply for citizens.
10
This framing worked. The mobilization was evident not only in record crowdfunding with over 600,000 francs in small donations in a short time, but also in the commitment of countless people—not only at Operation Libero, but in parties, the music scene, sports clubs, civil society, etc. The nation of will Switzerland mobilized. This resulted in an overwhelming rejection of 71.6 percent “No” in March 2018.
4. When Populism Becomes Popular: Preemptive Obedience to the Demands of PSB Opponents
Despite clear rejection, the No-Billag Initiative achieved its main goal: the nor-
9 EBU, 2024.
10 Operation Libero, 2017
malization of its narrative. By demanding the complete abolition of fees, the initiative was the most radical attack and had the greatest potential to shift the discourse.
The strategy of the right-wing populists worked. In 2019, broadcasting fees were first reduced from 451 to 365 francs, and in 2021 by another 10% to 335 francs per year per household. 11 Anyone who now thinks that the fees are still very high compared to Switzerland’s neighboring countries is correct, but should also consider a peculiarity of Switzerland: multiculturalism—which underlies the nation of will. The SRG acts as an inclusive platform for the whole of Switzerland and takes all language regions into account in its offerings. Programming is done in four languages. The effort behind this is reflected in the costs per household. A reduction in funds also means disregarding Switzerland’s cultural diversity and weakening the nation of will.
In spring 2022, the SVP, as part of a cross-party committee, launched another initiative against PSB. The so-called “halving initiative” aims to reduce broadcasting fees to 200 francs per year and household. This will probably be voted on in Switzerland in 2026. On closer inspection, it becomes clear: the halving initiative is the logical continuation of the No-Billag Initiative. Once the shift in discourse has taken place, the second attack with milder demands appears as a moderate compromise. The shift in discourse increases the chances of acceptance and thus the implementation of the right-wing populist agenda with each initiative.
This leads to preemptive obedience by democratic forces: Led by today’s SVP Federal Councillor and co-initiator of the halving initiative, Albert Rösti, the Federal Council responded in summer 2024 with a regulation to the halving initiative before it could even be assessed by parliament and the electorate. Without the possibility of a referendum, another round of savings for the SRG to 300 francs per household was decided by regulation. The argument was that the reduction in funds would take the wind out of the initiative’s sails. 12 This supposed compromise between the current fees and their halving is intended to satisfy everyone. However, this is a deceptive fallacy.
11 Statista, 2021.
12 Schweizerische Eidgenossenschaft, 2024.
The clear vote of the electorate does not seem to have been enough to reduce the right-wing populist pressure behind the scenes from the government, parliament—especially some parties—and corporate journalism on the SRG. Preemptive obedience to right-wing populist narratives instead of trust in (direct) democratic processes is a risky strategy. Politics, PSB, the media—they have bowed to the threat of the halving initiative before it has even come to a vote. In this way, the right-wing populist attack has already achieved its essential goal without having to win the vote: the weakening of PSB. Public service media will be hammered at until it can no longer fulfill its constitutional mandate and collapses.
The internalization of populist and anti-democratic narratives leads, as described above, to “collective norm devaluation.” This norm devaluation is expressed, for example, in a latent fear of PSB of right-wing shitstorms, because even legitimate critical journalism is classified as too politically biased. This leads to a loss of independence and quality, which in turn leads to more criticism even from actors from the broader political spectrum, resulting in further rounds of cuts for PSB.
5. Conclusion
Switzerland may be a testing ground for populist narratives, but the painful lesson this country is experiencing with its SRG concerns all liberal democracies. In times when autocrats use disinformation to further their political agenda, political instability and social division increase. For a nation of will, this is all the more fatal, because both democracy and the security of the country presuppose social cohesion. Freedom of expression and media diversity form the foundation of defense against the divisive attempts of authoritarianism. A nation of will can no more survive a hybrid war without investment in infrastructure than a conventional war can be won without investment in armaments.
The clear “No” to the No-Billag Initiative was a clear message to right-wing populists around the world: You cannot simply blow up the fourth pillar of democracy. The citizens of liberal democracies will not simply let their media and information supply be taken away.
But Swiss direct democracy also teaches: Winning a referendum does not secure anything in the long term. While the SVP repeatedly launches initiatives and thus
retains dominance over the discourse, the other parties fail to regain dominance over the discourse and to strengthen PSB.
Through preemptive obedience, PSB deprives civil society of the reason to stand up for PSB. Instead of appeasing right-wing populist forces, the key is to engage (civil) society. In the long term, initiatives in favor of PSB are essential for democracy. But this presupposes that democratic forces come out of the defensive, launch their own initiatives, and thus determine the narrative.
As long as this insight is lacking, the strategy of right-wing populists to divide and thus paralyze liberal democracies will succeed. PSB must be defended and further strengthened as a central infrastructure of the nation of will and of democratic and pluralistic society by all democratic actors—from politics, to the media, to civil society. For and with the nation of will.
Sources
Books and Book Chapters
Foroutan, N. (2019). Die postmigrantische Gesellschaft (S. 1–4). Bielefeld: transcript Verlag. Kelsen, H. (1929). Vom Wesen und Wert der Demokratie (S. 100.). Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Möllers, C. (2008). Demokratie – Zumutungen und Versprechen (S. 16–19). Berlin: Wagenbach. Journal Articles Mudde, C. (2004). The populist zeitgeist. Government and Opposition, 39(4), 541–563. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1477-7053.2004.00135.x Legal Texts and Legal Sources
Bundesverfassung der Schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft [BV] vom 18. April 1999, Art. 93 Abs. 2. (Stand: 1. Januar 2024). https://www.fedlex.admin.ch/eli/cc/1999/404/de Online Sources Bundeskanzlei. (2025). Übersicht in Zahlen. https://www.bk.admin.ch/ch/d/pore/vi/vis_2_2_5_9.html (Zugriff am 13. Mai 2025)
EBU. (2024). Public service media as an antidote to polarization. https://www.ebu.ch/files/live/sites/ ebu/files/Publications/MIS/login_only/psm/EBU-MIS-PSM_as_an_Antidote_to_Polarization-public.pdf (Zugriff am 9. Mai 2025)
Pro Futuris. (2023). Geschichten der Heimat: Eine Analyse nationaler Narrative in der Schweiz. https://cdn. prod.website-files.com/6480bcacab1d8c4d1df5e6d1/64cb7007ac85ba1a5594f8a5_230727_ProFuturis_Studie_Narrativstudie_FIN.pdf (Zugriff am 12. Mai 2025)
Operation Libero. (2017). Nein zum Anschlag auf die Demokratie [Medienmitteilung]. https://www. operation-libero.ch/de/medien-mitteilungen/2017-12-05/nein-zum-anschlag-auf-die-demokratie (Zugriff am 14. Mai 2025)
Statista. (2021). Entwicklung der Abgabe für Radio und Fernsehen für Privathaushalte in der Schweiz von 1987 bis 2021. https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/316553/umfrage/private-radio-und-fernsehempfangsgebuehren-pro-haushalt-in-der-schweiz/#:~:text=Seit%20dem%201.,Abgabe%20von%20 365%20Franken%20entrichten (Zugriff am 12. Mai 2025)
Schweizerische Eidgenossenschaft. (2024). Bundesrat lehnt SRG-Initiative ab und schlägt stattdessen Abgabesenkung auf 300 Franken vor [Medienmitteilung]. https://www.news.admin.ch/de/ nsb?id=101502 (Zugriff am 20. Mai 2025)
OPINION IS IRRELEVANT
INTERVIEW WITH ROGER DE WECK, FORMER EDITOR-IN-CHIEF OF “DIE ZEIT”, DIRECTOR-GENERAL OF SRG/SSR, AND AUTHOR OF SEVERAL NON-FICTION BOOKS, INCLUDING “„DAS PRINZIP TROTZDEM. WARUM WIR DEN JOURNALISMUS VOR DEN MEDIEN RETTEN MÜSSEN”, PUBLISHED BY SUHRKAMP IN 2024.
Mr. de Weck, how should media deal with anti-democratic populism? Like with any other subject of reporting.
This puts you at odds with some authors of the contributions in this issue, who, for example, demand that anti-democratic individuals not be invited to talk shows, etc.
We journalists should not take ourselves too seriously. In countries where rightwing authoritarians have open access to public service media, they are strong, and in countries where they are more excluded by public service media, they are strong.
How should a media house handle accusations, such as reporting too little or too biased?
First, an experience from Switzerland. Due to the referendums launched by the right-wing populist Swiss People‘s Party, the concerns of this party are omnipresent in the media, including the Swiss Radio and Television Corporation. It is unthinkable that they would be underrepresented because they are at the center of politics with their referendum. And that is toxic because it damages many debates. It is equally toxic to exclude them, as some media did at the beginning of the AfD. This also carries the risk of later overcompensating for them, and I see some signs of this now in Germany. In other words: When right- or left-wing authoritarians are strong in society, it is toxic, no matter how the media handles it. Now to the actual question. We friends of public service media must be realistic. Authoritarians operate on the principle: “If you‘re not for me, you‘re against me.” That means, anyone who takes a critically independent journalistic stance is against me. And we see, especially in the USA but not only there, attempts to simply destroy journalism. Additionally, the mandates of public service media are based on the values of enlightenment. Good information for a good democracy, respect for human dignity, representation of minorities, promotion of culture, etc. And anti-enlightenment parties and politicians perceive such mandates as biased. They don‘t want the principle of journalism, nor the principle of public
broadcasting. They don‘t want whatever public broadcasting does. The attacks will not cease. This is evident again in my country, Switzerland. First, there was a referendum to effectively eliminate the public service media. Now follows a referendum to halve the contributions to the public service media, which would largely result in the same outcome. And the media minister, a member of the Swiss People‘s Party, is making media policy through regulations intended to further destabilize the SRG. These people are enemies of the open society and thus enemies of public service media.
If the attacks do not cease, what should be done?
The most important thing is to remain independent and critical. Many users, viewers, and listeners feel that a considerable part of the private media landscape is under influence. And they long for an independent critical offering. That means: The general attacks from left- or right-wing authoritarians are an invitation to become even more critical. Even more inconvenient. Even more independent. This is appreciated by the audience, even if there may be some grumbling and complaining in politics here and there. And one must argue the own performance correctly: Many media houses limit themselves to presenting their offering as a good one. That‘s true. But that‘s not the essential point. People who pay a contribution naturally expect a good offering. It would be problematic if it were a bad offering. The main argument is: We remain true to journalism. We are independent and inconvenient. Especially and precisely because, of course, not a few colleagues in the editorial offices may be somewhat unsettled and intimidated.
Are there specific program proposals that would be useful for democracy in connection with anti-democratic populism?
First, I want to express that I greatly appreciate the work of ORF. I find that ORF, among the smaller public service media, is a beacon despite all demands. A wonderful idea for the future could be a fact-check in time-delayed debate shows. An idea that, to my knowledge, is not yet practiced anywhere. It should be implemented, even if populists will likely refuse. Journalism cannot be factual enough - I say it pointedly: Opinion is irrelevant. It‘s about the facts. The profession of journalism must assert the power of facts at every turn.
Thank you for the conversation.
IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE SO BEAUTIFUL
BARTOSZ T. WIELIŃSKI
GAZETA WYBORCZA
On January 6, 2016, Jacek Kurski, the newly appointed television director, appeared at the main building of the public broadcaster Telewizja Polska (TVP) on Woronicza Street in Warsaw and announced to the waiting journalists that he would whip the station into shape and turn it into a second BBC.
The BBC, the British public broadcaster, was considered a model of journalistic objectivity and political independence in Poland. Therefore, the new TVP director‘s statement did not sound credible. Kurski was an influential politician from Law and Justice (PiS), the populist-nationalist party that won the majority in the Polish parliament in the October 2015 elections. Immediately afterward, he was appointed Secretary of State in the Ministry of Culture. Previously, he was one of the main figures of right-wing propaganda and was considered the bull terrier, the ruthless spin doctor who would stop at nothing to harm the opponents of his formation. How could someone like him create an independent, missiondriven public medium?
Well, that‘s how it was. Under Kurski, the station did not become a BBC clone but rather a propaganda channel of Russian style. It began with a major purge. - The wind of change has blown - said the station chiefs appointed by the TVP authorities, smiling at the journalists to whom they handed dismissal notices. PiS politicians abhorred inquisitive parliamentary journalists who chased them through the corridors of parliament with cameras and asked uncomfortable questions. Months before the election, they publicly announced that many of them would lose their jobs. And they kept their promise. Several hundred journalists were dismissed or had to leave. They were replaced by absolutely loyal staff who could do anything. Anything, for example, meant running after Gdańsk Mayor Paweł Adamowicz with a camera and loudly spreading the claim that the mayor was doing business with the mafia. Such a smear campaign lasted six months and ended with the murder of Mayor Adamowicz. TVP sued those who claimed the television was in any way connected to this heinous political murder for defamation.
Another example: it was made public by TVP that the teenage son of a member of parliament, who had uncovered irregularities in state-owned companies run by PiS people, had fallen victim to a pedophile. The boy could not bear the trauma and hanged himself. The television blamed his mother for his death.
Another example: TVP constantly repeated during prime time a clip from a statement by Donald Tusk, the PiS-hated ex-premier who returned to Polish politics after his time as President of the European Council to lead the opposition. In the clip, Tusk said in German “for Germany”, which for TVP staff was proof that he was a German agent. These words were attached to every one of his statements. Tusk had to resort to personal protection.
These are just some drastic examples of propaganda. TVP could brand anyone who publicly opposed the PiS government as an enemy of the people. Actors, writers, journalists, social activists, scientists - if they dared to criticize the government, they were mercilessly attacked, PiS politicians were smeared in the broadcast, dirt was pulled from their resumes, and if there was no resume, then from their relatives. All this did not happen for free. The stars of PiS propaganda literally earned millions of zlotys, ministries subsidized their books and foundations. Antisemitic or racist remarks were overlooked by the authorities. And when one of the denounced sued the propaganda duo for defamation, the court found them guilty and fined them, President Andrzej Duda immediately intervened and pardoned the duo.
Propaganda in the public service media reached its peak before the elections. In the 2018 local elections, foreigners were incited against, a year later before the European and then Polish parliamentary elections, against gays and lesbians, who allegedly raped Polish children. The effect waned. In 2020, Andrzej Duda, whom TVP supported to the point of embarrassment, won another term as president by a majority of only 400,000 votes. In 2023, TVP pissed on everything and everyone, especially Germany. Nevertheless, PiS lost power. Jacek Kurski was not the director of the station at that time. He was dismissed in 2022. After the election defeat, he wrote in an analysis for the PiS leadership that the defeat was the result of the mismanagement of public television by those who replaced him. In doing so, he openly admitted what TVP was used for by PiS. There was no question of a second BBC.
In 2016, no one could imagine that public television could become a propaganda organ of the party or that its reporting could contribute to human suffering and death. When the people who came to TVP with Kurski began to dismiss journalists and the station started praising the government, we actually followed it with amusement. After all, these broadcasts were clumsy, primitive. My parents said that the same rhetoric was used as in the times of the People‘s Republic when Poland was communist. We had the impression that viewers would not believe it... At the same time, TVP relied on popular - albeit completely unpretentiousentertainment, buying licenses to broadcast major sporting events. Kurski knew how to lure Poles in front of the television. And once they were there, he dripped lies into them.
Even Joseph Goebbels, the propaganda chief of the Third Reich, taught that a lie, repeated a thousand times, becomes the truth. It is a nightmarish paradox that this method was introduced in Poland, a country where six million people died at the hands of Goebbels‘ German contemporaries during the war. Before the famous 2020 presidential elections, it turned out that up to 40 percent of Poles obtained their knowledge about the world around them from public service media. When Kurski‘s people tell them daily that the PiS government is the best government in Poland‘s history, that the opposition is weak and treacherous, and that the greatest threat to Polish sovereignty is Germany and the Berlin-controlled European Union, it is hardly surprising that PiS remained in power for eight years. OSCE observers regularly wrote in their reports that elections in Poland were not fair because public service media supported PiS in the election campaign and fought the opposition.
We watched in disbelief and helplessness. We demonstrated for the rule of law, women‘s rights, and membership in the European Union, but in the early years of the PiS government, we never protested against the lies and hatred on television. Polish democrats fled from TVP and switched to other television stations. But the authorities were aware of this and tried to align independent media. The private television station Polsat decided not to mess with PiS to avoid trouble. The defiant TVN was reined in by PiS. The party passed a law to expropriate the American owners. Only now did Poles take to the streets in masses. PiS backed down, but only because the Russian invasion of Ukraine was imminent and Poland needed American support.
What happened to TVP is not an isolated case. Already in 2004, the independent television station NTV was brutally taken over by Russian President Putin. In Hungary, ruled by Viktor Orban, there are practically no free media, as well as in Turkey. In Slovakia, the government of Robert Fico wants to proceed against public service media similarly to Poland. And politicians of the Austrian FPÖ also dream of taking over and aligning public service media. What is to be done? First, the threat must not be underestimated. public service media in the hands of populists become a weapon in the fight against their opponents. The example of Poland shows that they can even be deadly. Therefore, a secure legal framework must be created in advance, making it simply impossible for the authorities to take over the media and manually control their programs. It is necessary to react decisively in advance when politicians threaten journalists, orchestrate campaigns on social media, or try to interfere in their work. Institutions must be created to oversee the adherence to ethical standards in journalism and take responsibility for training the next generation of journalists.
The events in Poland show that journalism is not just a business, especially since editorial offices, in the face of digitization and the pressure of big techs, are no longer chickens that lay golden eggs. Journalism is a task; it is a service to society. Therefore, it must be protected. Unfortunately, little is done in my country to protect journalists. After all, it was independent journalists who uncovered the scandals of PiS politicians and their corrupt incompetence, leading to the party‘s defeat. Should the Law and Justice party come back to power, journalists will not be forgiven...
MEDIA BATTLE IN EASTERN EUROPE
MICHAL HVORECKY FREELANCE TRANSLATOR AND AUTHOR
The free media in Slovakia are once again undergoing changes under the national-populist government of Robert Fico. What influence do the rulers exert on them? What is the state of diversity in public and private media in Austria‘s post-communist neighboring country?
Dismantling of the rule of law, insults, lawsuits, access bans, editorial interference: One and a half years of Robert Fico‘s fourth term are marked by an unprecedented series of attacks on press freedom. With Fico‘s national-populist government, the erosion of media freedom has accelerated, leading to a situation similar to that already seen in Hungary, Turkey, or Russia. The taming of domestic media by the Hungarian government under Viktor Orbán seems to serve as a model for Fico. The public broadcaster RTVS was dissolved by law in August 2024, renamed, and replaced by a state medium. Opposition parties announced a complaint to the Constitutional Court against the law, accusing the government of creating a propaganda medium for itself. Since then, television has clearly favored the ruling three coalition parties Smer-SSD, Hlas (The Voice), and SNS (Slovak National Party) in its programming, while private TV and radio stations are repeatedly intimidated by new licensing policies and numerous fines. Additionally, according to opposition parties, the growing influence of governmentaffiliated oligarchs like the “Penta Group” in the media sector is politically motivated, just like numerous criminal and civil lawsuits against critical journalists such as Martin M. Šimečka or Matúš Kostolný. Fico and his party colleagues use legal actions to intimidate critical independent media and punish them for unfavorable reporting. At the same time, authorities and state companies began not to publish advertisements in critical media anymore.
The Fico government also restricts journalists‘ physical access to government information. Under the pretext of opening up to new and other media (mainly fake news outlets like Hlavné správy or Hlavný denník), it introduced a new regulation and expelled established media houses from the government building at Freedom Square in Bratislava. The government aimed to make access to information more difficult and to punish editorial offices and individual reporters
if they did not report according to their expectations. These media professionals have now been granted access after all, as they immediately threatened legal action.
There is growing concern that Fico will further restrict free reporting. Media experts suspect that the Slovak government is also using the spyware “Pegasus” to monitor and spy on journalists and human rights activists. The press “must finally report in a balanced way again”, says Fico, “and let more conservative and national voices be heard.” The government claims to stand for free speech. In reality, the opposite is happening. In the plan to restructure RTVS, the government unfortunately also had a direct lever, as Slovaks do not pay broadcasting fees - Slovak public service media are financed directly from the state budget. The editors-in-chief are now Smer loyalists.
“In an accelerated process, Prime Minister Robert Fico‘s government has made an unprecedented attempt in the history of Slovak democracy to secretly gain political control over public broadcasting. This draft law, which runs completely counter to the recommendations of the European Commission‘s recent report on the rule of law in Slovakia and the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA), is an affront to European law”, commented Katja Gloger, spokesperson for “Reporters Without Borders.” Yes, media freedom in Slovakia has been increasingly under pressure for a year and a half. Yet Slovak citizens can still inform themselves from diverse sources - quite different from Hungary or Russia. Government-critical media still reach a large part of the population. The two important center-left-liberal daily newspapers SME and Denník N, as well as the popular online newspaper Aktuality.sk, cannot be attributed to the government camp. Journalist Ján Kuciak, who was murdered, also worked for Aktuality. Investigative reports find wide dissemination through numerous online portals. On the other hand, the postcommunist daily newspaper Pravda is government-affiliated.
I have been writing for Denník N for ten years. In Slovakia, even a decade ago, high-ranking politicians targeted journalists to such an extent that many citizens had had enough. This sentiment is also reflected in the remarkable success of the newspaper N, which now has 91,000 digital subscribers. N employs a more than 100-member editorial team in Bratislava and also in the regions of the country. The innovative Slovak newspaper is one of the showcase examples
of profitable, reader-funded critical digital journalism of the 21st century. Since early 2018, the medium, founded only in January 2015, has also been economically in the black. A small print edition continues to be published. Advertising revenues play an important role. Three-quarters of the revenue (7.9 million euros in 2024!) comes from digital subscriptions. The in-house book publisher sold 140,000 copies in three years.
“It is our duty to write about issues like corruption and cronyism, and we will continue to do so”, Lukáš Fila, head of the N Press media house, told me. “Some coalition politicians use the situation to suggest that it is this type of reporting that led to the attack on Prime Minister Fico. Many of those who call for ‚reconciliation‘ actually want the media to refrain from any critical expression. That cannot and will not happen, of course.” Unfortunately, not all media are so determined to continue reporting freely and critically. At the end of May 2024, TV Markíza, Slovakia‘s most popular private television station, canceled the talk show Na Telo (On the Body) after host Michal Kovačič said live: “A battle for the Orbánization of our station has begun.” Kovačič founded his own online medium 365, intending to continue reporting freely and asking politicians critical questions.
For three decades, Slovakia has been exposed to threats and internet manipulations, especially from Russia. Hybrid warfare in Western liberal democracies and open societies means the continuous stream of misinformation, influencing the climate of opinion, and foreign election interference to further divide and polarize the community. Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico also contaminates the discourse with verbal violence, spreads conspiracy theories, lies, and half-truths, and insults political opponents and critical “presstitutes.” Whether protests against COVID measures, global migration, rising inflation, or the Russian war against Ukraine: Fico used the numerous crises for his big comeback and was re-elected as head of government in October 2023. In the digital age, Fico has transformed into a political influencer. His monologues dominate almost all online channels. He now wants to build an authoritarian state, not just govern but establish a regime. For this, he urgently needs full control over public service media, which the government is now rapidly transforming into propaganda broadcasters. Opposition parties speak of an unprecedented arrogance of his power and increasingly authoritarian interventions.
A similar strong affinity for the internet as Fico has had for a decade is also shared by Culture Minister Martina Šimkovičová, who is also responsible for public service media. After the former popular TV Markíza presenter was fired in 2015 for racist incitement, she started a new career as a star of the new right-wing scene. On the internet, she could freely present her ethnic-nationalist ideology, and her YouTube messages on TV Slovan (Slav) reached more and more followers. “LGBTQ ideology” as the reason for Europe‘s decline and “the extinction of the white race”, Kremlin propaganda about Maidan and Zelensky, vaccine opposition, loud anti-Americanism, calls for NATO withdrawal... her entry into politics was not long in coming. In 2023, Andrej Danko (SNS) placed her and other similar obscure online stars from the ultra-right spectrum on the electoral list of the weak and long-corrupt Slovak National Party in the hope of securing re-entry into parliament. Although this only narrowly succeeded, the most unlikely of all ministers was born.
In summary, since Fico and Šimkovičová came to power, they have gradually brought Slovakia‘s public service media landscape under their control. This is also why tens of thousands of people have been taking to the streets every second Friday for months in Slovakia for free media and democracy, to defend them against the rise of right-wing forces. Fico and Šimkovičová have labeled all demonstrations as being controlled from abroad. Press freedom is not an abstract good. Slovakia warns of what it can mean when one coalesces with new right-wing forces. They do not suddenly become milder or try to solve actual problems. Many in Austria and Germany now say: Let the FPÖ or AfD govern so that people can see that they cannot do it.
I say: Please, rather not. In a short time, profound changes with long-term consequences have been undertaken in the media and cultural landscape. No publicly funded institution is free from patronage in the name of a dangerous ideology.
It is time for political and public resistance to become louder. As Austrian reporter Martin Pollack clearly stated: “What is currently happening in Slovakia is happening against all of us, it concerns all of us. It affects all of us.”
POPULISM AND THE PUBLIC –THE BATTLE FOR COMMON SENSE
GÁBOR POLYÁK
EÖTVÖS LORÁND UNIVERSITY
Perhaps the entire democratic world is now realizing once again that democracy does not sustain itself. As a system of governance, democracy can lose societal support, and there will always be political forces attempting to exploit these historical moments. I have direct experience with Hungary, and it clearly shows that restoring democracy from an authoritarian state is almost impossible or at least depends on a number of factors that civil society, opposition politicians, and independent journalists cannot influence.
Mutual Dependence
In times of peace, it may seem unnecessary to extol the virtues of democracy at every opportunity. It is rarely mentioned that democracy provides the best conditions for both the community and the individual to develop peacefully. Freedom of expression and the clash of opinions, the discovery of truth, and public control of the exercise of power are also goods that can only be achieved within the framework of democracy. There is no authoritarian power that does not suppress the free flow of information. However, experience shows that the absence of discourse about democracy leads to increasing voter indifference to the handling of public affairs. Indeed, more and more people are questioning democracy as a system of government. A series of social problems and global crises have led to the perception that (not for the first time in history) democratic decision-making is no longer seen by many as a guarantee of security and prosperity.
Professional journalism is also a child of democracy. It is vainly regarded as a guardian of democracy, as the fourth estate. Because if the conditions for democracy and the rule of law are not met, journalism will gradually become impossible. This process can take a long time, and the example of Hungary shows that there can be islands that preserve the professional and ethical standards of journalism. However, they cannot prevent themselves from being embedded in the polarized public, which is a fundamental component of the functioning of populist politi-
cal forces. Quality journalism is powerless against political forces that refuse any cooperation, see critical journalism as an enemy, constantly stigmatize it as such, and use the public solely to underpin their own views.
Public service media providers are in a particularly vulnerable position. Political restraint is essential for the operation of public service media. It is extremely tempting for any government to demand loyalty in exchange for public funds. In the absence of a democratic political culture, there is no organizational and financial guarantee system to protect public service media from political influence. In Hungary, we had this experience even before 2010.
Legal Protective Wall
The protection of public service media is anchored, among other things, in the legal conditions attached to restructuring or determining funding sources. The Hungarian example shows that the mere requirement of a two-thirds majority in parliament is not enough to prevent abuse of power if the government majority holds this majority. Especially if this parliamentary majority can also abolish the possibility of effective constitutional court control or even the possibility of constitutional amendment itself. Nevertheless, anchoring the main principles for the organization and financing of public service media in the constitution could provide an important guarantee. This not only restricts the formal legislative process but also represents a clear commitment to impartial and autonomous public service media as a democratic value.
The European Media Freedom Act could be an important support for this constitutional protection. As a binding European regulation, it not only sets out the basic principles of public service media provision but also provides the framework for the funding of public service media and the selection of their managers. The actual strength of the regulation will depend on whether the European Commission consistently enforces its implementation.
Uncontrolled long monologues
Politicians now find their own public, their own audience on social media platforms. The media as a whole, operating according to an editorial logic, are thus
bypassed and find themselves in an increasingly difficult position in the battle for voters‘ attention. Nevertheless, emerging populists still consider it important to constantly attack traditional media, including public service media, and undermine their credibility. And once they are in power, one of their first steps is to bring as many of these media as possible under their own uncontrolled rule.
Populist movements in Western Europe typically take the form of a new party trying to gain power through elections. However, the Hungarian example shows another way: Since the regime change of 1989/1990, Fidesz has been a dominant political force, and even its sharpest critics could not foresee that its main political program from 2010 onwards would be to reverse the regime change and create a new state party and a total state. If populists fail in this, they focus on delegitimizing traditional media while simultaneously seeking opportunities to appear in these media.
Journalistic tools should and can prepare for such situations.
Exposing the Miracle Workers
First of all, it must be stated that the uncritical adoption of statements and videos published on social media is not journalism. Journalists must face the realization that the news race is all but lost. No news editorial team can be faster than the primary content published on social media. But if this race is lost, it is worth focusing on what journalism can contribute to such content. And that is fact-checking, interpretation, contextualization, expanding the discussion with those mentioned but not addressed in the social media post, and obtaining feedback. Social media provides raw material, not finished reports.
The biggest mistake that can be made to reinforce populist authoritarian aspirations is to relativize their ambitions. Once populist political forces emerge, every effort must be made to ensure that their anti-democratic intentions are recognized and understood by as many voters as possible. Above all, public service media cannot afford to remain silent about the dangers of populism, the baselessness of populist promises, and the democracy-destroying effects of populism.
Exposing the absurdity of populist promises is, in most cases, classic fact-based journalism. Comparing promises and claims with reality often leads to the conclusion that populists demand institutions and services that already exist. Quantifying the promises makes it clear that their implementation in other areas inevitably involves trade-offs. Complex social issues that cannot be summed up in a few right or wrong statements must be addressed in their complexity. In any case, the one-sentence solutions of populists must be exposed, for example, by presenting a hypothetical scenario that would directly result from the simplifying statements. Satire and humor are important tools in this regard. It is obvious that educational work about the phenomenon of populism can conflict with the obligation to provide impartial, factual information. Populist political forces are parties that legitimately run for elections and have genuine societal support. The manifestos of these parties naturally contain a number of critical assessments that express legitimate expectations of the political, economic, and legal system. These can be used to start a genuine dialogue on critical issues.
Established parties must also constantly be confronted with this criticism. They must also be met with a firm journalistic stance, with a response to meaningless answers that miss the point. Journalists must force genuine political answers to difficult social questions such as migration, the costs and significance of fighting climate change, the international war environment, or the issue of growing social inequalities.
Populists immediately propose radical means to remedy the identified problems. They do not simply see elections as a self-evident means of peaceful power change but as a trigger for revolutionary change. They describe every election as a fateful struggle of life and death and hold the view that all other political forces participating in the elections cause or even wish for the ruin and destruction of the nation. They themselves are thus the only credible representatives and saviors of the nation, without a valid alternative. This self-interpretation necessarily contradicts the diversity that is the most important principle not only of media policy but also of democratic political processes. Journalists must oppose any form of communication that identifies the nation with a single political party.
Populists also try to control the public at the level of words. They redefine already used terms, introduce new terms, and some terms are explicitly avoided.
The task of journalists in this context is not to allow our language and ideas to be stolen and rewritten. We must consciously avoid the distortions and twists imposed by populists and point out their true meaning.
Pay attention to emotions too!
Populism must not be fought with arguments and rationality alone. Since populism itself targets almost exclusively emotions and passions, it is necessary to provide responses that appeal to emotions. In addition to the already mentioned humor, evoking sympathy for the groups attacked by populists, praising individual freedom, emphasizing the predictability of democracy in the face of populist chaos are all topics that can be used to evoke positive feelings. Enthusing the masses for democracy is no easy task, but some of the building blocks of democracy can be translated into positive emotions. Moreover, European history is full of examples that painfully illustrate the consequences of the absence of democracy. So much populism is quite acceptable.
To demystify populism, all you really need are trained journalists and good journalistic questions, nothing more. How can it be that all other parties are out to harm the nation, serve foreign interests, be traitors? How is it that the simple solutions of populists do not occur to others? How can it be that one party represents the interests of all groups in society? How can it be that every criticism, every question can be interpreted solely as a hostile attack? Where does the latent or declared superiority of populists come from?
However, the populist breakthrough cannot be prevented by journalists and public service media alone. In populist rhetoric, they themselves are part of the elite to be gotten rid of. What is needed is a renewal of established parties, civil society, and the media, which can mobilize a multitude of committed democrats to defend common sense and fair political competition.
INTELLIGENCE OF/IN THE MEDIA: A PUBLIC MISSION
FLAVIA BARCA & MICHELE MEZZA MEDIA CONSULTANTS
From broadcasting to browsing
Can we consider the connection between public service and democracy to be well-founded? Or should we not rather, in the face of the undeniable range of public services in non-democratic countries, attest to an inverted relationship, whereby it is democracy that can attribute tone and dialectical and civic force to public multimedia communication systems?
In order to answer these questions, it is prejudicial to investigate the transition to a new phase of the digital society in which generalist television systems, such as the majority of European public broadcasters, find themselves disoriented in the whirlpool of completely asynchronous models and behaviour of the television offer in which producers and viewers exchange roles and information.
An embarrassment that derives first and foremost, and not without meritorious exceptions, from a cultural diffidence and, consequently, professional resistance, to face precisely that change of behaviour that we can summarise in the transition from the broadcasting-type industrial media model, from one to many - which baptised public television and profoundly characterised its organisational structures and production languages - to what we define as browsing, in which each user individually seeks the modes, times and contents of his or her media consumption. A true Copernican revolution that is, due to its social matrices and brands, affecting the democratic system itself, revealing aspects of its inadequacy that are not secondary.
We are referring to a process of personalisation of behaviour, in our case of a multimedia nature, which revealed itself first of all in the editorial world with a long gestation starting from the end of the 1970s, with the abrupt passage ‘from hot to cold’ - as it was then called - which changed the factories of the journalistic sector with the irruption of computers into the editorial offices. These,
replacing the lead printing presses, redesigned the stages of composition, filing and transmission of pages and reports. A more gradual but equally drastic evolution was the shift from film to electronic programme productions in TV broadcasting. In this mutation, it was later realised how much and how the journalists‘ work was transformed by the new production methods.
In the meantime, another dynamic was subterraneously digging into our expressive capacities, as recorded by a prescient sensor of the impending change of scene that was Jean-Francois Lyotard with his essay La condition postmoderne: rapport sur le savoir (1979), in which he already indicated as a dominant trend what he called “the hegemony of information technology over knowledge’. In particular, the French philosopher wrote: ‘our working hypothesis is that knowledge changes status as societies enter the so-called post-industrial age and cultures enter the so-called post-modern age... This transformation does not leave the nature of knowledge intact. It can only circulate on the new channels and become operational if it is knowledge that can be translated into quantities of information”. An action that we could consider subversive because of its effects, in the absence of widespread social awareness, of homologation of the cognitive structure even before communicative behaviour.
The threat to democracy and social coexistence itself of a passive subservience to the dominance of a linguistic determinism induced by ‘numerical’ hegemony in social relations was also denounced by the message sent to the recent Paris summit on artificial intelligence by the Pontiff, who warned decision-makers and experts not to reduce themselves to a use of generative resources that ‘limits the vision of the world to realities expressible in numbers and enclosed in pre-packaged categories’.
The mediamorphosis of the significance
Forty years after the beginning of that genetic mutation of vocabularies, it now seems more pertinent and evident to us how much the populist and sovereignist threat to representative democracy and the dialectical pluralism of opinions cannot be separated from the uncontrollability of this so-called ‘mediamorphosis’ that has not found any form of correction or dialectical integration from other social visions, let alone from the public television apparatus (Mezza, 2024).
The mediamorphosis that can be glimpsed is thus the inducement of two phenomena. The first is summarised by Maurizio Ferraris (2021), who points out that our entire digital life is realised through the inscriptions of documents on the network and that the manipulation and alteration of these documents is the way in which the so-called hybrid warfare is implemented, which aims to destabilise the democratic order of entire communities. The second is best documented by Jill Abramson (2019) who shows us how the alluvial abundance of content now engulfs the communication market and how this is the effect of users becoming producers and technologies enabling anyone to tamper with media files. Quality and quantity feed off each other in the anthropological transformation of knowledge and information.
All this activates an automatic process of redefinition of the overall meaning through the decomposition and recomposition of content units, what we now call semantic parameters in artificial intelligence training programmes, in which infinitesimal digital particles, individual bytes, which materially crumble any linear continuity of authorial content, can be indifferently replaced or altered by those who are empowered to manage the reference platforms. This is a phenomenon that has been identified as a continuous rumination of the web, in which all material is constantly manipulated and integrated, deviating its meaning from the authors‘ objectives.
An ambiguous and complex phenomenon, defined by two specific forces. On the one hand, an extraordinary push towards the participation of the social audience, which has enormously increased in its capacity - both quantitatively and qualitatively - to intervene in the shaping of public opinion, particularly through social platforms. On the other, the action, in this push, with asymmetrical and increased powers, of the so-called calculators, the owners of the automatic cataloguing and editing apparatuses who have access, unlike normal users, to the biased black box of digital systems (Pasquale 2015).
This system was then, in the second generation of digitalisation, at the turn of the century, congested by the appearance of that completely unseen and invisible resource that is big data, i.e. that inexhaustible loop between the collection and processing of data on each individual user and the adaptation of a media offer that is structured and paged differently for each individual consumer,
based precisely on the flow of that data that allows the adoption of linguistic forms and types of content increasingly akin to the end user.
Interactivity, which, together with connectivity, is the most discriminating function of our time, manifests itself as the language of a new social pact that reforms the material statute of the communication system: we surrender intimate data in exchange for a welcome personalisation of the media offer.
Who governs data governs common sense?
The phenomenon inevitably disrupts the horizon of the public broadcasting system, born and established at the height of industrial Fordism, by which it was designed and organised in a vertical geometry.
The agent and engine of this revolution of the self is the power to collect and process the data of all the components of a community of message recipients, be they listeners, users, customers or patients, by virtue of an unequal pact in which, as we have already said, we force ourselves to surrender information about our identities and discretions in exchange for accessible and tendentially free services, such as the digital ones.
Lev Manovich (2020) writes, describing the continuous rumination by digital systems that do not just transport files, but co-produce the products of authors “[just as for photos, also for texts and editing] algorithms automatically correct contrast, tone and colours of images; they detect faces and take a picture when people smile; and they adjust all the exposure parameters after identifying the type of scene... This is why post-production is more important today than production”.
Sealing this unequal bargain that sees, in the media market, authors, programmers and generic consumers cede sovereignty to the owners of digital platforms, who can thus adapt languages exactly to the individual profiles of their users, is the power of profiling each individual subject. Informatics, statistics and new computing powers support artificial intelligence devices that allow for the totalised scanning of communities and territories by inventorying the tastes, propensities, thoughts and linguistic forms of each inhabitant of those realities.
Moreover, elements of critical awareness, in relation to a new role of users, were traceable even in the season of television‘s greatest power as mass media. In fact, in what, still in the 1990s, Manuel Castells in his monumental trilogy on The Rise of The Network Society (1996) described as “a fundamentally new medium, characterised by the seductive nature of the sensory simulation of reality, as well as by easy communicability, along the lines of less psychological resistance”, a restlessness of a viewer who already seemed to want to escape from a totalising homologation was perceptible, as Umberto Eco wrote, quoted again in Castells‘ essay, “The suspicion was advanced that the broadcaster organised the television message on the basis of its own code, which coincided with that of the dominant culture, while the recipients filled it with aberrant meanings, according to their particular cultural codes”.
The new mission of Public Service Media
In this complex transformation, the first challenge is thus the very survival of the PSM voice in the media sphere.
The fork in the road for public service media is one that sees them, on the one hand, becoming platforms themselves and, on the other, making themselves available as content agencies for all platforms. These are two modes that presuppose different technological structures and skills and, above all, a relationship with data and algorithms that are in some ways opposite. It is therefore necessary to think of a hybrid mission, capable of combining both in the daily flow and in long-term programming an unprecedented and nationally specific mix of community and unifying languages, where the autonomy of a national common sense on major themes and narratives is cemented, with an articulation of highly customisable formats through a pervasive presence on all kinds of platforms and bouquets.
But beyond the challenge of ‘mere’ survival, the critical issue is the relevance of a public voice of civicism and social cohesion, i.e. the public mission of the PSM (Rai Ufficio Studi, 2021). This is subject to a double threat. ‘Internal’, from those who do not recognise this role for public services and tend to diminish its scope and vocation, for the purposes of a clumsy declination of the concept of universality as homologation to other media. And ‘external’, by the flood of conversations that clog the public sphere with disinformation that undermines
the trust of those who participate in it, against which finding public instruments to counter it is increasingly complex.
This dual challenge affects the social and cultural legitimacy of the public communication system, as well as imposing a radical rethinking of its organisational and professional architectures.
In this direction, Rai Ufficio Studi conducted research (2024) that, among other things, sought to define a vision of change, summarised below in seven points:
1. Language innovation. Let‘s rethink technology. By investing in customization tools that can integrate the technological processes of digital transformation with ethical considerations. In particular, any process must be tested for: editorial independence, transparency, diversity, pluralism, inclusion, contrast to fake news and “echo-chambers”. On the one hand, this means working on technology, testing new dialogues with AI including new recommendation systems (as many European public services are experimenting with – see Rai Ufficio Studi, 2023) and, on the other, ensuring that journalists maintain a central role in the production and dissemination of information, and verification of sources.
2. Building competencies. Let‘s rethink the social impact of the media promoting digital literacy and capacity building processes, which is increasingly urgent in a world where the ability to enter and exit the fictional dimension is increasingly compromised. In this sense, “media education” is not only about the ability to counter fake news but, and this becomes central, about distancing oneself from the content proposed by the platforms so as to maintain a clear vision of the difference between reality and imagination. It is also essential to deconstruct the paths of simplification and trivialization, not only by promoting complexity but also by supporting a new narrative that looks at complexity as a goal inherent in the history of the human race. On this issue, public service media can seal new alliances with the audiovisual value-chain.
3. Social cohesion. The social impact of media is also decisively concerned with combating fragmentation processes and promoting tools for negotiating meaning (Barca 2023). The mission to connect generations and closedin bubbles, stimulating the coexistence of identity and diversity, is urgent and marks an equal and opposite direction to that in which commercial plat-
forms move. Public service can become a competitive space where different social and cultural values dialogue, a space of negotiation (Barca 2024).
4. Participation. Public services must promote citizen participation and involvement, increasing creativity and trust. PSM can strengthen the dialogue with society, including through direct communication channels: a good strategy to address the growing mistrust in institutions. By intervening on the trust between itself and the social fabric, as in a therapeutic relationship, the public service can work to rebuild those links between citizens and fundamental sectors of social life, such as administration, environment and health. In this sense, the local dimension of public service media can become a privileged territory for the exchange and definition of a new social pact.
5. Privacy and management of big data. Rethinking the circulation of big data and all information concerning people, giving them back the possibility of choosing what to do with their personal data, negotiating them with transparency, is a question of ethical use of technology. On this issue, which has countless implications (economic, legal, ethical, reputational, etc.), we are far behind and multinationals dictate the way. Therefore “The public service media can stand as guarantors, in front of the public, of ‚accountability‘, of transparency, of proper handling of personal data (“data trust”) but, above all, of awareness of the forms that technological capitalism has taken” (Barca 2024). public service media could also promote a ‘big data big society deal’, in which they become accredited repositories of data, and communities, territories and all citizens can access them just as they manage their money in the bank (Mezza 2020). In the leap between broadcasting and browsing, while private platforms (also, increasingly, through ‘public’ surveillance systems) have user profiling at the core of their business, public platforms have the opportunity to take a step backwards by questioning the very concept of profiling. An ethical look at profiling must reshape its objectives and models, transforming it into a process of listening and supporting competence building. To this end, on the one hand, it is necessary to ensure the transparency, sharability and negotiability of algorithms and, on the other, it is necessary to intervene on the databases on which generative AI systems are trained, the real roots of knowledge on whose ‘pollution’ levels the future of the planet is at stake.
6. Sustainability. The theme is twofold since it concerns not only the impact of digital technologies on the environment but also, more broadly, the funda-
mental contribution that the media can make to achieving the goal of a sustainable economy. public service media could, for example, launch a largescale slow media campaign to combat the highly accelerated production, transmission, storage and consumption of media content and digital devices (Moei et al. 2024). PSM could also promote the creativity of reuse, as a commons concept and as an innovative editorial supply strategy. And they could “open the black box”, adopting a transparent carbon footprint reporting of AI-powered devices in the form of a “Tech Carbon Footprint Label” to raise awareness and inform regulators and the public about the implications of every AI-powered action (Barca 2024).
7. R&D. Free research aimed at the common good must maintain a central role. This concerns the activity of studying and experimenting with new practices, technological, artistic, aesthetic, etc. It also means resuming that function that has marked much of their twentieth-century history of connection between scientific culture and humanistic culture, between machines and (post)humanism. If today culture has left the technological discourse in the hands of scientists and digital entrepreneurs, perhaps it is time to redefine a public development project for the coming decades.
In conclusion, the public service can take on the new mandate of “domesticating” digital technology for the objectives of the common good (Barca, 2024).
Bibliography
Jill Abramson (2019) Merchants of Truth: Inside the News Revolution, Bodley Head
Flavia Barca (2023) “La sfida del digitale alla missione dei media di servizio pubblico” in La televisione del futuro. Le prospettive del mercato televisivo nella transizione digitale, a cura di Fernando Bruno, Vincenzo Lobianco, Antonio Perrucci, Augusto Preta, Il Mulino Flavia Barca (2024) “A Cohesive Voice for Europe: Public Service Media responding to contemporary challenges” in The Future of Public Service Media in Europe, Public Value Text, ORF
Manuel Castells (1996), The Rise of The Network Society, Wiley-Blackwell
Maurizio Ferraris (2021), Documanità, Filosofia del mondo nuovo, Editori Laterza
Jean-Francois Lyotard (1979), La condition postmoderne: rapport sur le savoir, Les Éditions de Minuit
Lev Manovich (2020) Cultural Analytics, Raffaello Cortina editore
Michele Mezza (2020), Il contagio dell‘algoritmo, Donzelli
Michele Mezza (2024), Connessi a morte, Guerra, media e democrazia nella società della cybersecurity, Donzelli
Moei H., Enli G. & Syvertsenii T. (2024), “The dark side of the media welfare state”, in Jakobsson P., Lindell J. & Stiernstedt F. (ed.), The Future of the Nordic Media Model: A Digital Media Welfare State? Nordicom, 2024, 1, p. 241-260
Frank Pasquale (2015) The Black Box Society: The Secret Algorithms That Control Money and Information, Harvard Univ Pr
Rai Ufficio Studi (2021) Coesione sociale. La sfida del servizio pubblico radiotelevisivo e multimediale, Rai Libri
Rai Ufficio Studi (2023), Algoritmi di Servizio Pubblico, Sistemi di raccomandazione ed engagement per le nuove piattaforme multimediali pubbliche, Rai Libri
Rai Ufficio Studi (2024), Trasformazione digitale e Intelligenza Artificiale, Una mappa delle sfide per i media di Servizio Pubblico, Rai Libri
PUBLIC SERVICE MEDIA IN SWEDEN
FREDRIK STIERNSTEDT SÖDERTÖRN UNIVERSITY STOCKHOLM
Sweden’s public service media still stand as pillars of what scholars have termed the “Nordic media welfare state.” Unlike many of their European counterparts, the Swedish public service broadcasters remain robust, well-funded institutions. They enjoy remarkably high levels of public trust and reach large, diverse audiences across the country (Stiernstedt et al. 2024). Notably, Sweden is the only country in Europe where a public service VOD platform outperforms Netflix in terms of audience share.
Yet this strong foundation is now being tested by the same forces reshaping media systems across the continent. Swedish public service media face mounting pressures: rapid technological change, increasing platform dominance, globalized competition, shifting audience habits, and growing political hostility—particularly from right-wing populist actors. These challenges are not theoretical; they are real and intensifying.
In May 2025, the Swedish government unveiled its new framework for public service media for the next eight years. This announcement followed the work of a parliamentary committee tasked with reviewing the public service system and recommending reforms. But the process was far from smooth. It sparked widespread concern, especially among observers worried about the growing influence of parties that have long criticized public service broadcasting. The far-right Sweden Democrats—along with the Christian Democrats and the traditionally center-right Moderate Party—have consistently pushed for deep cuts, a narrower public service remit, and tighter political control (Stiernstedt 2024).
In the end, the proposals that emerged were less radical than many had feared. Yes, there will be funding cuts—but not as drastic as anticipated. The broad public service mission will remain in place. Still, dark clouds linger on the horizon. There is now talk of intensified scrutiny of the public service companies’ efficiency and political neutrality, and of new limits on their ability to use digital platforms to reach audiences. Such measures risk undermining both the independence and the vitality of public service media.
One of the most striking developments in this process was the political fragmentation it revealed. The parliamentary committee failed to reach consensus. Instead, two separate proposals were presented: one from the right-wing majority, another from the center-left opposition. When the findings were made public, the two factions even held separate press conferences. This level of political division around public service media is unprecedented in modern Swedish history. For nearly a century, there has been a broad, cross-party consensus on the value of public service. That consensus now appears to be fracturing. No matter what the new license period ultimately brings, one fact is unmistakable: the political unity that once underpinned public service media in Sweden is eroding. And with it, perhaps, the very idea of public service as a shared societal project.
As Ursula Huws (2020: 3) observes, “it can be difficult to separate the specific features of [welfare] institutions from the social goals that inspired their design.” If we think of public service media as part of a “media welfare system”, the same holds true. The preservation of public service media cannot be solely about protecting and reinforcing existing institutions—though that, too, is of immense importance. These institutions were created in a fundamentally different media landscape and were designed to address challenges that only partially overlap with those facing today’s media systems.
This raises crucial questions: What are the social goals that public service media should serve today? What institutional frameworks and policy tools are needed to support those goals? And how can public legitimacy for public service media be rebuilt in an era of digital dominance and ideological polarization? I believe engaging with these questions is of vital importance in a situation where public service media face both the overwhelming power of digital giants and increasing attacks from right-wing politicians.
A realist political philosophy for public service media1
While the Reithian principles of inform-educate-entertain are often seen as the core of public service broadcasting, its social goals are more general and
1 An earlier version of this text has been published in Stiernstedt, F., Jakobsson, P. & Lindell, J. (red.) (2024). The Future of the Nordic media model: a digital media welfare state?. Göteborg: Nordicom, pp. 319-332.
wide-ranging. The idea of public service media could be formulated as being a systematic intervention in the media environment in order to transform the media system as a whole to cater better to the public interest. But what would that mean in contemporary society? In other places I have argued for the need for a “realist political philosophy” (Guess 2008) in relation to media policy (see for example Stiernstedt et al 2024, p. 326; Jakobsson et al 2023).
In devising a realist position on the future, this is what we have to start from: a private media sector dominated by global companies with little to no democratic control or accountability; a still popular public service institution, although with an aging audience and with limited possibilities to broaden its offer into the digital realm; and a political landscape still dominated by entrenched neoliberal ideals of privatization and market solutions, with some signs that this era might have come to an end, but with new political challenges in the form of right-wing populism. One might, from this description, be tempted to say that a realist position should be equal to the fatalist position that the end of public interest media – and public service institutions – is inevitable. Instead of this negative conclusion, I think, however, that an alternative is possible.
This rests on two different but complementary strategies – on the one hand, forcing a shift in the business model of the dominant digital platforms, which is the root cause of many of the problems, and on the other, offering an attractive alternative to the same platforms. These are by no means original ideas, but seem to me to be important. The business model shared by many of the dominant digital platforms requires that companies gather as much information as possible about their users and employ that information in order to maximize traffic on their platforms. This is the only way for these companies to increase their revenue, which mainly comes from advertisement. It is this business model that drives companies to disregard, or downplay, things such as the value of a truthful and respectful dialogue, instead optimizing for increased traffic, regardless of whether this means also maximizing things such as disinformation and hate speech. It is also this business model that makes it necessary for the companies to downplay concerns about privacy and allows them to create filter bubbles and engage in algorithmic discrimination. Many of the policy solutions put forward in this space are focused on single concerns, such as disinformation, hate speech, privacy, algorithmic discrimination, and so on, but without a
consideration of the underlying problem. It is true that some of the policies put forward by the European Union in the last years have had consequences for the advertisement business model, but this does not seem to have been the main concern, but rather a consequence of trying to solve other problems. The European Data Protection Supervisor suggested in 2021 that “European legislators should consider a ban on online targeted advertising based on pervasive tracking and restrict the categories of data that can be processed for such advertising methods” (Woollacott, 2021). This might be seen as a too radical solution but it should be given proper consideration since upending the advertisement business model is as close to a one-size-fits-all solution that we can come. Regulating the dominant platforms is, however, not enough; there is also a need for alternatives.
Graham Murdock (2018) has argued that public service media is the most strategically placed actor to further a future built on the idea of universalism and democratic participation, as an alternative to the enclosed spaces of private digital media platforms. Murdock argued that universal access has been a core idea in the development of the Internet, as exemplified by the world wide web, the open source movement, and Wikipedia. Although these ideas and technologies have been successful in their own way, they have been superseded by later developments that have put Internet users within walled and private ecosystems, whose main goal is to maximize profits by exploiting the data generated by users within these ecosystems. Public institutions, such as public service media companies, museums, libraries, and universities, are present online, but they do not act in a concerted way to offer citizens an alternative to the centralized platforms of the dominant private actors; instead, they increasingly rely on the infrastructures erected by these private companies. Murdock’s idea then, which he shares with many others, is that public service media companies are uniquely positioned to serve as a hub, or a platform, through which the public can be given access to the vast array of offerings from these different public institutions. Furthermore, they should be made available in such a way that they invite and make possible a public discussion and further creative productions, inspired, or provoked, by these offerings.
This is also in line with the ideas outlined in a report published by the Nordic Council of Ministers by The Nordic Think Tank for Tech and Democracy (2023:
6), which recommends the promotion of “innovation and implementation of technology that supports open digital public debate to create alternatives to large online platforms” and giving “public service media a strong digital mandate for online presence, content creation and development of platforms for democratic debate online”. This vision is, as emphasized by Murdock (2018) not only about content and public conversations, but also about the infrastructure that makes those conversations and the sharing of that content possible. It might not be possible to separate the idea of public service from the material infrastructure that underpins this idea. Relying on the private infrastructure now being built by the global tech companies not only further entrenches these companies’ position of power, but also reproduces the socially, culturally and ecologically unsustainable - and ultimately undemocratic -nature of that infrastructure.
While such futures for public service media might sound unrealistic or even utopian – I believe this is the most realist way forward for public service media in Europe.
HOW CAN PSM BEST SUPPORT DEMOCRACY?
PATRICK BARWISE LONDON BUSINES SCHOOL
The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index 2024 scores 167 countries’ political systems across five dimensions: electoral process and pluralism, functioning of government, political participation, political culture, and civil liberties. It describes just 25 countries – including both Austria and Britain - as ‘full democracies’, with a Democracy Index (average score across the five dimensions) of at least 8.0 out of 10. All 25 are developed countries apart from three borderline cases (Uruguay, Costa Rica, Mauritius). Only 6.6 per cent of the world’s population live in one of these ‘fully democratic’ countries.
If we add ‘flawed democracies’, with a score between 6.0 and 8.0, the number of democracies increases to 71, accounting for 45 per cent of world population. The 46 ‘flawed democracies’ include several highly developed countries (France, USA, Belgium, Italy) but most are in Latin America, Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe (former Warsaw Pact states now in the EU such as Poland and Hungary).
The other 55 per cent of the world’s population live in what the EIU calls either ‘hybrid regimes’, with a score of 4.0-5.0 (36 countries, 15.7 per cent of people) or ‘authoritarian regimes’, with a score below 4.0 (60 countries, 39.2 per cent of people). The 36 ‘authoritarian regimes’ are all in Asia, Africa or Latin America apart from Belarus (wholly in Europe) and the European parts of Russia and Azerbaijan.1
References
Geuss R. (2008) Philosophy and Real Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Jakobsson, P., Lindell, J., & Stiernstedt, F. (2023). Normative foundations of media welfare: Perspectives from the Nordic countries. Media, Culture & Society, 45(2), 305-322. Murdock, G. (2018). Reclaiming digital space: From commercial enclosure to the broadcast commons. In G. F. Lowe, H. Van den Bulck, & K. Donders (Eds.), Public service media in the networked society: RIPE@2017 (pp. 43–58). Nordicom, University of Gothenburg. https://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:norden:org:diva-5291 Stiernstedt, F. (2024). Vägval väntar public service. [Public service at the crossroads] I: Mediestudiers Årsbok 2024: Haltande affärsmodeller & nytt mediestöd. Stockholm: Institutet för Mediestudier, p. 70-84. Stiernstedt, F., Jakobsson, P. & Lindell, J. (eds.) (2024). The Future of the Nordic media model: a digital media welfare state?. Gothenburg: Nordicom.
The Nordic Think Tank for Tech and Democracy. (2023). A Nordic approach to democratic debate in the age of big tech: Recommendations from the nordic think tank for tech and democracy. Nordic Council of Ministers. http://dx.doi.org/10.6027/nord2023-004 Woollacott, E. (2021). European regulator calls for ad targeting ban. Forbes. https://www. forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2021/02/11/european-regulator-calls-for-ad-targeting-ban/
All 25 ‘full democracies’ and most of the 46 ‘flawed democracies’ have PSM, although the extent to which they are genuinely independent of government varies. At the other extreme, the state broadcasters in the 60 ‘authoritarian regimes’ are – and are universally accepted as – fully government-controlled.
There is a degree of chicken-and-egg in the correlation between PSM and demo -
1 Economist Intelligence Unit, Democracy Index 2024, February 2025: https://www.eiu.com/n/ campaigns/democracy-index-2024/. The EIU is the research and analysis division of The Economist Group, publisher of The Economist.
cracy. Well-funded, politically independent PSM service are partly a symptom of a healthy democracy but the question addressed here relates to the opposite causality: how can PSM best support democracy in their own countries?2
The challenge: strong democracy, low trust
The subtitle of the EIU report is What’s wrong with representative democracy?. It highlights ‘a dichotomy between the high scores recorded by many countries in the top half of the global rankings – which possess the formal institutions, processes and legal prerequisites of democracy – and the low esteem in which many citizens hold their democratic systems’ (page 6). Most people in these countries still see democracy as the best form of government in principle, but many now believe that it is not working for them in practice. For instance, one major study, using multiple datasets, found a sharp increase, from 38.7 per cent in 2005 to 57.5 per cent in 2020, in the proportion of people around the world saying they were dissatisfied with democracy in their country. The increase was especially marked in developed democracies.
The report highlights two key drivers of this growing dissatisfaction with democracy: reduced trust in government and a perception that politicians and political parties have failed to address voters’ concerns.3
Trust in government is, and has long been, higher in developing countries (an average of 58 per cent in 2024) than in developed countries (44 per cent). From 2014-21, both were on a steadily rising trend. In developed countries, it reached a peak of 51 per cent in 2021, during the pandemic - just 6 points lower than developing countries’ 57 per cent. Since then, however, it has fallen sharply in developed countries while continuing to rise in the developing world, leading to the 14-point gap (58 versus 44) in 2024.
2 Some bigger, richer countries also have international PSM such as the BBC World Service, Deutsche Welle and – until President Trump shut it down in March 2025 – Voice of America. These services have a key role in providing reliable news in countries with few or no independent media. The principles I’ll discuss apply equally to these international media, except that their funding is even tighter than for domestic PSM and they often operate in difficult and dangerous environments.
3 Ibid. pages 29-37.
The EIU attributes the recent reduction in trust in developed countries’ governments to several sources. One is an increase in perceived economic inequality and reduced prospects for younger people. Related is a perception that the political system is ‘rigged’ in favour of the wealthy and powerful. This perception partly reflects false conspiracy theories, but some of it is justified by the growth of lobbying firms, increasing the extent to which the voices of the few (wealthy individuals and corporations) are heard more than those of the many (ordinary citizens). There have also been some damaging corruption and insider trading scandals in recent years, including in developed countries.
Meanwhile, political party attachments have become weaker, especially for centre left, social democratic parties, whose close relationship with the white working class has been gradually replaced by a looser association with younger, socially liberal, university-educated voters. The ‘anti-woke’ culture wars can be seen as a socially conservative reaction to related long-term trends such as the legalisation and increasing acceptance of same-sex relationships and marriage.
Politically, these trends have driven an anti-incumbent backlash and rising support for populist insurgents on the far left and, especially, the nationalist far right. These parties have varying agendas: the far left ones favour better public services funded by higher taxes and progressive policies on social issues such as trans rights, while those on the far right are more socially conservative and favour low taxes and small government - although they tend not to highlight their economic policies, which would in practice favour the few over the many. But they all present themselves as anti-establishment, offering voters apparently simple solutions to complex problems and discrediting any experts who point out the limitations of their proposals and the need for difficult choices. All of this is a problem for PSM and other centrist media that give more credence to facts and experts than to rumours and non-experts but are, often rightly, seen as part of the establishment.
Social media and Trump
2.0
The declining trust in democracy has been strongly reinforced by advertisingfunded social media spreading online disinformation and conspiracy theories. Far from filtering out false, misleading and harmful content, the dominant
players Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc) and X, actually prioritise it because it generates more ‘clicks’ and, therefore, more commercial revenue.
We now know more about how this happens thanks to Frances Haugen and Sarah Wynn-Williams, former senior Facebook executives who both, separately, worked closely with the founder and majority voting shareholder Mark Zuckerberg but left the company and became whistleblowers in 2021 in 2025, respectively. They both describe Zuckerberg’s complete indifference to the social and political damage caused by lies and harmful content spread on the networks he controls and how the company’s revenue maximising algorithms actively increase the harm.4
Further evidence comes from a large, peer-reviewed study (840,000 individuals in 116 countries) showing how the expansion of the mobile internet – the main social media channel - in the ten years after the 2007 iPhone launch led to a reduction in approval of government and an increase in support for antiestablishment populists, especially in Europe.5
Donald Trump’s 2024 re-election as US President, with Elon Musk (executive chairman and majority shareholder of X) and other US tech leaders in or close to the new administration, may well strengthen these challenges to western democracy. Many of Trump’s actions, including defunding the US public broadcasters, are undermining independent media, the judiciary and other democratic checks and balances. The political impact beyond the US is unpredictable, however, because of the White House’s volatility and the unpredictability of the - often unintended - consequences of its actions. (For instance, the threats to Canada have boosted Canadian patriotism and, potentially, support for CBC, its national broadcaster). What is certain, however, is that the challenges to democracy will continue.
4 Dan Milmo, ‘Frances Haugen: “I never wanted to be a whistleblower. But lives were in danger”’, Observer, 24 October 2021; Stuart Jeffries, ‘Careless People: A Story of Where I Used to Work by Sarah Wynn-Williams review – a former disciple unfriends Facebook’, Observer, 16 March 2025.
5 Sergei Guriev, Nikita Melnikov and Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, ‘3G Internet and Confidence in Government’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 136, 4 (November 2021), 2533-2613.
A five-point PSM action plan to respond to these challenges PSM should respond to these challenges in five ways:
1. Scrupulously fair and balanced reporting and analysis, as always
2. Redoubled efforts to increase efficiency and value for money, partly through digital transformation
3. Finding new, creative ways to ensure that its reporting and analysis reach younger audiences
4. Increased audience, consumer and citizen research
5. More assertive communication, based on 1-4.
Point 1 is self-evident and has always been central to the PSM value system. Similarly, all PSM are under strong and, in most cases, growing financial pressure, so point 2 is already high on their agenda.
On point 3, ‘necessity is the mother of invention’. An encouraging example is the BBC’s flagship current affairs programme Newsnight, which has been analysing and commenting on the day’s news every weekday since 1980. In November 2023, in response to continuing cuts in the BBC’s overall funding, Newsnight’s budget was cut, its slot shortened from 45 to 30 minutes, its staff reduced from 57 to 23 and its specialist investigations teams let go, leading to strong public criticism of the BBC. But Newsnight has defied the predictions, increasing its audience by 30 per cent.6
Two reasons for this audience growth are younger viewers’ preference for the shorter format and the programme’s active use of social media. Another was the appointment of a popular lead presenter, Victoria Derbyshire, who has managed to attract high-profile interviewees and showing that she can hold power to account without being seen as unduly confrontational. The programme repackages her big interviews for the BBC’s online iPlayer, where its viewing is up 50 per cent.
PSM should aim to explain, as engagingly as possible, key issues like climate change, so that more people of all ages understand the basics of how green-
6 Ian Burrell, ‘Newsnight is still a jewel in the BBC’s crown, despite suffering brutal cuts’, The I Paper, 16 December 2024.
house gases create global warming and why scientists worry about potential tipping points, eg that the melting polar ice caps will, at some point, lead to runaway climate change due to reduced solar reflection and reversed ocean currents.
On point 4, research can inform strategy and programme development but also support communication. My advice is to trust the public, although that can take courage. Two examples:
• The BBC’s right-leaning critics constantly accuse its news coverage of leftwing bias. But independent surveys using neutral wording consistently find that only about 20 per cent of the British public agree with that claim and an equal number think the exact opposite, that it has a right-wing bias. The 60 per cent in between either explicitly say it is balanced or ‘Don’t know’ - hardly compatible with the oft-repeated ‘left-wing BBC’ narrative. 7
• A second line of attack is that the BBC offers poor value for money. But when householders who said this were deprived of its services for nine days, in return for nine days’ licence fee, over two-thirds changed their minds: 69 per cent in 2015, 70 per cent in 2022).8
Trusting the public also involves getting a better understanding of the drivers of dissatisfaction with democracy and reflecting that on air – going beyond short ‘vox pops’ in the street towards research-based programming that reflects, explains and analyses people’s concerns and what lies behind them.
Points 1-4 can provide the ‘ammunition’ for point 5, a more assertive, evidencebased communication strategy with the public, policy-makers and other media.
The financial, political, technology and market pressures on PSM are stronger than ever 9 - but so is the democratic need for them in today’s world. We have
7 Patrick Barwise and Peter York, (i) The War Against the BBC, Penguin, November 2020, pages 235-9; (ii) ‘Is the BBC left-wing? Not according to 80% of the British public’, Press Gazette, 13 June 2023, https://pressgazette.co.uk/comment-analysis/bbc-left-wing-bias/ 8 MTM, Deprivation Study: What Is Life Like Without the BBC?, April 2022, https://wearemtm. com/case-studies/deprivation-2022/
9 Patrick Barwise, ‘The challenges facing public service broadcasters’, InterMedia 49, 4 (January 2022), pages 20-25, https://www.iicom.org/intermedia/vol-49-issue-4/the-challenges-facingpublic-service-broadcasters/
evidence that, among developed countries, those with well-funded PSM have populations more resilient to online disinformation.10 And, in most, if not all, of the countries with PSM – apart from the USA (for now) – most of the public holds increasingly negative views of those undermining our democracies, including the tech bros controlling social media. We may even be approaching ‘peak populism’ in developed countries with PSM.
Leading Confidently from the Top
Of course, none of this is easy. It needs to be driven confidently from the top, with PSM leaders showing and encouraging belief in the organisation’s ability to keep delivering its crucial mission, despite the many challenges.
10 Edda Humprecht, ‘Why resilience to online disinformation varies between countries’, LSE Media Policy nlog, 8 April 2020, https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/medialse/2020/04/08/why-resilience-toonline-disinformation-varies-between-countries/
THERE’S A WAR GOING ON
HANS LAROES LIMELIGHT FOUNDATION, INVESTICO
In an age where facts are fragile and journalism is under siege, defending the truth is no longer enough. We must rebuild trust — not through slogans, but through openness, conversation, and humility.
Drawing on decades of newsroom leadership and frontline experience, Hans Laroes reflects on the slow erosion of journalism’s authority, the dangers of public disconnection, and the urgent need for transparency and engagement. This is a call to reimagine journalism — not just as a watchdog of power, but as a shared civic project.
IIn October 2017, Jeff Bezos brought a gift to The Washington Post, the newspaper he had owned for a couple of years.
The billionaire founder of Amazon had acquired an antique clothes wringer and had a handcrafted wooden table made to display it. The ensemble was installed in the Ben Bradlee Conference Room.
It was a gift loaded with meaning — a nod to the Watergate era and the legendary investigative reporting by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward that ultimately led to President Nixon’s resignation.
At the time, Nixon’s attorney general, John Mitchell, had tried to intimidate the Post’s publisher, Katharine Graham, to prevent publication. His crude warning: “Katie Graham’s gonna get her tit caught in a big fat wringer if that’s published.”
The story ran anyway. The threat itself was reported too, though the Post’s legendary editor-in-chief, Ben Bradlee, cut the word “tit.”
Bezos’ wringer came to symbolize the power, grit, and determination of jour-
nalism — its self-confidence in the face of pressure and intimidation. He added a small plaque that read: “If it comes, so be it. Just do the work, as best as you can, wherever it may lead.”
I came across this story in Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos, and The Washington Post by Marty Baron, who served as the Post’s editor-in-chief until 2021. (You might know him from the movie Spotlight, which tells the story of the Boston Globe’s investigative team uncovering decades of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. Marty — played by Liev Schreiber — was the Globe’s editor then, before he moved to Washington.)
II
There’s a war going on — a war against journalism as we know it. It’s been unfolding for more than two decades. Trump didn’t start it; you could argue he rode its wave into the presidency and then became one of its loudest amplifiers. Ben Smith — editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News from 2011 to 2020, later media columnist for The New York Times, and now co-founder of the news platform Semafor — wrote a book about how much of the online media landscape morphed into a megaphone for (far) right-wing views. Some outlets did this deliberately, launching constant attacks on mainstream media, journalists, facts, and institutions. It worked. These were not just passing insults — they were the slow, relentless drips that hollowed the stone.
Smith’s book title says it all: Traffic: Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral. In the end, it wasn’t just about billions in ad revenue. It was about damage, demolition, and control.
For a long time, those of us in politics and journalism operated from a shared assumption: that facts and storytelling shaped public understanding and drove change. But now, lies — and the uncertainty they create — have become more potent than facts.
Of course, this isn’t just an American story. In our global digital world, powered by tech overlords like Musk and Zuckerberg, lies and disinformation now travel across borders with ease — no passport control, no customs.
In Europe too, far-right politicians and their media allies use the same platforms and tactics to undermine democratic values and dissolve the social glue that holds societies together.
Part of their playbook? Attack public service media. Label it “state-controlled”, accuse it of bias, question its independence. Change the laws. Cut the funding. Stack boards with loyalists. Use friendly outlets to hammer away at credibility. Fixate on mistakes to fuel the narrative that public service media is corrupt.
We’ve seen this in Hungary and Poland — though Poland, to its credit, did fight back. But similar patterns are emerging elsewhere.
I’m from the Netherlands — a country I long considered a safe haven for independent journalism. In many ways, it still is. But now the far-right Freedom Party, led by Geert Wilders, participated in the ruling coalition, and made public service media a target. The government collapsed and Wilders hasn’t managed to dismantle public service media, but he has succeeded in slashing funding. That’s step one.
A few years ago, you could picture society as a large circle — with smaller circles inside it representing various institutions: the judiciary, media, education. They were all distinct, but still part of the same system, connected by some form of mutual respect, even in disagreement.
That circle is broken. Now there‘s a canyon.
A divide between “us” and “them” — and both sides feel the same way about the other.
It’s also a split between those who value facts, and those who see facts as threats — intrusions into a worldview where truth is shaped by identity, not evidence. The climate crisis is a clear example.
This is no longer a battle between left and right. It’s becoming a battle between democrats and anti-democrats.
And the media — especially mainstream media — are taking fire every day. Fake CNN. Failing New York Times. The “Amazon Washington Post.” The “lying press.”
(Sounds disturbingly familiar when translated into German, doesn’t it?)
III
Maybe I’m exaggerating a little. Of course, the situation isn’t the same in every country. But what I’m trying to describe is a long-term trend — one we urgently need to confront.
So what should our answer be? What can we do?
Marty Baron was clear about his role: “We are not at war. We are at work.”
He believed in journalism’s core mission — to investigate, to reveal, to hold the powerful to account. He pointed to stories that broke open political scandals, exposed corruption, and led to resignations, criminal charges, and real-world consequences. Stories about war, poverty, hunger, violence, human trafficking — reported from around the world.
That work matters. It always has. Journalism is about digging for truth, giving context, connecting dots, and pulling back the curtain on Potemkin villages. It‘s about calling out fraud and nonsense when we see it.
And yes, Marty is right. But I no longer believe that’s enough.
Would a new Watergate — in 2026 — bring down a president? I doubt it.
Just look at Trump: a convicted felon who remains a political force. Would explosive revelations sink him? Unlikely. His base would dismiss the facts and go straight for the throat of the messenger.
It’s a familiar playbook now: discredit the journalist. Ignore the evidence. Divide the country even further.
That’s what autocrats do — not just in the U.S., but everywhere.And in that darkness, journalism — and democracy — will die together.
IV
When we describe our role in society, we often say things like “speaking truth to power” or “holding the powerful to account.” And yes — those are important ideas. But they’re also our words. I’m not sure our audiences would use the same language — or even share our view of what journalism is supposed to be. There may be a growing disconnect between professional journalism and the public. You can see it in many newsrooms — especially in broadcast and digital media. Journalists often work indoors, under pressure, glued to screens, with only a handful of reporters racing across the country on deadline.
Who still has time to pause? To look around? To be present in local communities and engage in real conversations?
Do we hear the stories that don’t come to us through press releases, official briefings, or spin doctors?
Are we — culturally — too homogenous when deciding what’s newsworthy and what isn’t?
In my experience, many people don’t understand — and maybe don’t trust — the editorial decisions we make. They don’t see the process. And when decisions happen inside a black box, suspicion is inevitable.
When I was editor-in-chief, I tried to address that by opening up our newsroom. One of the most effective tools back then was blogging — not to repeat the stories we published, but to explain the choices we made. Editors, correspondents, the political team — they all shared how decisions were made, what the discussions were like, what obstacles we faced in gathering the news. At first, my colleagues saw it as pointless extra work. But over time, they started to appreciate it — the chance to explain how the news came together, the compromises, the frustrations, the behind-the-scenes stories of war coverage and daily struggles.
It led to something rare and valuable: one-on-one conversations with members of the audience who had honest, reasonable questions.
We combined this with real-life meetups. We brought in young people to talk about the news, to meet journalists, to see what we actually did with their taxpayer money. Many came away impressed — even when they didn’t agree. They understood our choices better. They also saw that we make mistakes — not as part of a conspiracy, but because we’re human.
I believe these kinds of efforts — not as short-term projects, but as part of a longterm mindset and commitment — can rebuild the trust we’ve lost.
Transparency is key. It turns a vertical relationship into a horizontal one.
Public Service Media, especially, needs allies, friends, long-term partnerships. That’s how we build real counterpressure against coordinated attacks. That’s how we defend facts, strengthen reality, and protect our societies from disinformation and lies.
And maybe, just maybe, this is how we expand the very purpose of journalism — by opening ourselves to the public, listening to what people truly care about, and co-creating a new set of shared values and principles.
“Speaking truth to power” is a top-down phrase. Let’s try something more grounded: meaningful conversation. Listening. Rewriting the foundation of journalism — together.
Not just we, the journalists.
We, the people. V
A number of years ago, at NOS, we “adopted” two classes from a vocational school in Rotterdam — girls aged 16 to 19, most of them from Moroccan or Turkish backgrounds.
They didn’t expect much of the future. They felt like outsiders, pushed to the margins of society.
At first, they didn’t trust us. And why would they? Journalists only came when they needed a quote — then disappeared, leaving the damage behind.
But we kept showing up. Over eight months, we visited them. We talked about the news, about the stories that mattered in their lives. They visited our newsroom. Met our anchors. Some even sat in the anchor chair themselves.
Especially the girls who wore headscarves — they never imagined they’d belong in a place like that.
And something shifted. Some of their stories inspired our coverage. They felt respected. Seen.
And we learned. A lot.
By the end of that year, something had changed. There was trust. Even friendship.
“Hans!” one of them called out — we were on a first-name basis by then.
“Listen. We used to only watch Turkish TV at home. But now, every night at eight o’clock, my whole family watches NOS News. Because now NOS is part of our world. We belong.”
That was one of the defining moments of my career.
THE BROADCASTING PETITION AS A MILESTONE IN AUSTRIAN DEMOCRATIC HISTORY
KONSTANTIN SCHISCHKA UNIVERSITY OF VIENNA
When the first petition in Austrian history was held between October 5th and October 12th, 1964, and 832,353 people joined its central demands, it marked not only a milestone in Austrian media history but also in the history of Austrian democracy. The “Broadcasting Petition” symbolically and politically represented resistance against the political proportionality and control of the ORF (Austrian Broadcasting Corporation).
Although the ORF was heavily influenced by the allocation of airtime and positions based on political proportionality and the influence on broadcast content from its founding until the first reform in 1967, internal and civil society resistance against this system only began to emerge around 1962. When a secret agreement by the ÖVP/SPÖ government was made public in 1963, which would have further exacerbated the political influence on the ORF, chief editors Hugo Portisch (Kurier), Bruno Fjalnik (Wochenpresse), and Fritz Csoklich (Kleine Zeitung) positioned themselves against the coalition government‘s plans. Under the headline “Against the Broadcasting Dictate”, the Kurier began collecting informal support signatures from March 23rd, 1963. Despite the silence of the ORF and party media about this initiative, over 370,000 signatures were collected. This eventually led to an invitation for Hugo Portisch to the Austrian Parliament by the federal party chairmen Bruno Pittermann (SPÖ) and Alfons Gorbach (ÖVP) to negotiate the conditions for ending the initiative. Portisch and his supporters‘ central demands included the annulment of the secret agreement, the “depoliticization” of the ORF, and the enactment of an implementation provision for holding petitions by the Austrian Parliament.
After NR member Fiedler (ÖVP) announced on April 18th, 1963, that he would present a draft for a new petition law, it was finally passed on July 10. However, since a reform of the ORF did not occur, Hugo Portisch officially initiated the first petition in Austrian history, with almost all Austrian newspapers, except
for party media, joining the call for the “Broadcasting Petition.” When the grand coalition broke up in 1966 and the ÖVP achieved an absolute majority in the national elections, it was ready to implement the demands in the form of the 1967 Broadcasting Act.
This law established modern and depoliticized structures in the ORF, such as the role of the general director, the composition of the supervisory board, financial and organizational program reforms, and criteria for filling positions based on public tenders and professional qualifications. The Broadcasting Petition not only led to an increase in journalistic quality and diversity in the ORF but also promoted transparency and independence in the broadcasting structures. This was particularly true for radio: Ö3, Ö1, and regional programs were created, and new and critical programs were established. A look at the petitions conducted since 1967 shows that the Broadcasting Petition opened up a tool of direct democracy characterized by significant political participation of the eligible population and a wide variety of topics. Hugo Portisch himself stated in “Media and Time”: “The call for broadcasting reform was also the birth of all subsequent petitions and referendums to this day.”
Although the real political impact of petitions can be viewed ambivalently due to their non-binding nature, the Broadcasting Petition impressively highlights two aspects. On the one hand, it demonstrates how civil society engagement can lead to profound political changes. On the other hand, it underscores the importance of an independent public broadcaster as a pillar of our democracy.
ORF: WHAT WAS, WHAT IS, WHAT WILL BE
PETER HUEMER JOURNALIST, INITIATIVE “SOS ORF” 2006
When the ORF (Austrian Broadcasting Corporation) began its operations in radio and television in 1967, it centered around two key questions: independence from political parties and cultural hegemony in Austria. That was almost 60 years ago, yet fundamentally, nothing has changed. Both remain of central importance. However, what has significantly changed is the public perception of the ORF. In the early days of the institution, its reputation was enormous – despite fierce political attacks, initially from the SPÖ (Social Democratic Party of Austria), and after Chancellor Kreisky achieved the (first) dismissal of General Director Gerd Bacher in 1974, the attacks from the ÖVP (Austrian People‘s Party) followed like clockwork. Initially, the damage was negligible; Bacher returned for another eight years and, after another dismissal, a third time. Nevertheless, the derogatory term “Rotfunk” (Red Radio) was coined. It wasn‘t true, but it harmed the ORF.
Additionally, the public esteem for journalism, which had been considerable for a long time in the Second Republic, generally declined at the end of the 20th century. This was linked to an increasing tabloidization of the media, which perhaps not coincidentally coincided with the seemingly unstoppable rise of politician Jörg Haider and the FPÖ (Freedom Party of Austria). This changed politics and political style in the Second Republic.
The ORF was also affected, as it had to compete with the emergence of commercial TV stations in the Federal Republic – initially with a dismal level. This allowed viewer numbers to be maintained initially, but not the reputation as a public service broadcaster. The ORF became just one broadcaster among many, and the fight for cultural hegemony in Austria receded into the background.
The article was first published in „Radiomomente” (eds. Konrad Mitschka, Karin Moser, Stefan Benedik; ORF and hdgö 2024) and appears here with the kind permission of the author
In 1999, a panel of experts selected Gerd Bacher and Hans Dichand as Austrian journalists of the century. The decision is competent when considering the second half of the century, but it is cynical. Because it was precisely between
these two (and their respective journalistic personnel, of course) that the battle for cultural hegemony took place. One encouraged people to find a way out of self-imposed immaturity through culture, education, and broad knowledge. The other advised them to remain as they are. Gerd Bacher wanted to make the ORF a “central institution for Austrian identity.” Hans Dichand wanted –without loudly proclaiming it – the same with the Kronen Zeitung. But his approach in the battle for the Austrian soul was the exact opposite. Hans Dichand won the battle. His seismographic sense for what Austrians really want – above all, no change! – was legendary.
It would be unfair to blame the ORF for no longer wanting what it once did: to create an enlightened information society. Today, that sounds like hubris anyway. It probably was, and it did not benefit the ORF‘s popularity, especially when commercial TV competition arrived, offering it cheaper. Now the ORF is keeping up with the times and struggling enough with envy and hostility.
Rule number one when in distress: seek allies! Currently, the ORF does not look particularly good in this regard. Let‘s start with the Parliament, as the ORF has never truly shaken off its dependence on Austrian politics: The FPÖ, currently the strongest party in terms of votes, hates the ORF and would destroy it if it could – just as Fico, who despises critical journalism, has done in Slovakia.
The ÖVP does not go that far. But they do not like public service broadcasting either. This view is shared with other conservative parties, with the CDU since Chancellor Kohl, with the English Conservatives who have been fighting the BBC – at least since Thatcher‘s Falklands War, which the BBC reported on correctly, unlike most private media. And the fact that the ORF became known as “Rotfunk” in conservative circles was not due to the FPÖ, which was insignificant at the time, but the ÖVP, because they did not have sufficient access.
The situation with the SPÖ is somewhat similar. They also miss the access they would like to have. On the other hand, the SPÖ fundamentally supports the public service system, even though they initially fought the “Bacher Broadcasting” under Kreisky. It should be noted here that the founding of the ORF after the successful referendum in 1964 was the achievement of the ÖVP‘s sole government under Josef Klaus.
With the Neos, there is no impression that public service broadcasting is a concern for them. They seem closer to commercial broadcasting, which makes money, than to public service broadcasting, which costs money.
Die Grüne party (The Greens) remain, who support the ORF. But they are a small party whose voice currently carries little weight.
That is the situation in Parliament. However, the information and entertainment system has fundamentally changed over the past two decades due to new digital services and social media, to the extent that, as one might rightly say in this case, not a stone has been left unturned. This affects print media just as much as radio and television, and the media consumption habits of the younger generation are a disaster for traditional media.
As a result, little support can be expected from those who are themselves threatened in their existence for public service broadcasting, especially since newspapers themselves are in competition with the ORF because they run their own digital projects. However, this does not change the fact that the future of the ORF is still decided in the Austrian Parliament, as it was in the old days.This means: If there are hardly any allies in politics and other media, the ORF still has its audience, consumers with their demands. A referendum like in 1964 would be pointless, as the ORF is too battered, and its opponents in politics are not thinking of radical destruction that would justify an uprising. They are thinking of a somewhat slower systematic destruction by gradually turning off the financial tap. This would have already begun if the FPÖ had not been unable to seize its chance for the office of Chancellor in February 2025. That saved the ORF.
And now – having just escaped – ORF should focus on its original and primary task: to inform, educate, but also entertain, and emphasize its unique position as a public service institution. This works well on the radio with Ö1 and FM4. If someone asks why the ORF should receive public money, the cultural station Ö1 is an unbeatable argument. Further cuts to these comparatively inexpensive radio stations would certainly be counterproductive for the ORF.
To educate means: There is sufficient scientific literature on what populism means, about its model of democracy, which ultimately leads to the destruction
of democracy and authoritarian governance. And that this would also destroy media freedom and media diversity. None of this is new, but it must be conveyed unequivocally. Like a declaration of war. In doing so, the public service broadcaster serves democracy and can secure its survival. However, this will only work if the ORF has and uses sufficient digital capabilities, as it can only reach part of the audience – especially the young – through this means.
This will require a lot of imagination, new formats, and presentation forms, and it will not work without stars (male/female) who generate sufficient interest or invite identification. The staged debate about the fees of a few top presenters serves the envy complex and is populism of the most primitive kind.
At the same time – it‘s obvious – the ORF cannot retreat to information, reflection, and cultural offerings, as the commercial competition suggested for profit maximization, but must, as its mandate as a public service institution requires, serve a broad audience with various interests and needs. This was never easy and is even less so today, as broadcasters – whether commercial or public service – are losing the young audience.
However, if it does come to the point where the Austrian Parliament decides to starve the ORF financially, and if the resistance is not sufficient, then the ORF will have to set priorities: information, culture, science, sports, entertainment. This will and must still cost a lot because – to name just one example – the ORF should by no means give up its excellent network of foreign correspondents. A public service system on a narrow gauge must not happen.
Because one thing is certain: Without public service broadcasting, the country will become dumber.
A RESILIENT ORF FOR A ROBUST DEMOCRACY
CHRISTIAN HASLINGER & MARIA MAYRHOFER #AUFSTEHN #ORFRETTEN 2017
Anti-democratic forces currently pose one of the greatest challenges to democratic societies. One of their central strategies is to bring the media under their control and make critical journalism impossible. Public broadcasters are a major target in this regard. Looking at Hungary in the 2010s or at Slovakia shows how quickly a public broadcaster and the entire media system can be restructured and aligned. Instead of critical journalism, government propaganda increasingly prevails. This is also because, in Hungary, broadcasting is financed through taxes via budget, allowing the government to practically control the funds and directly interfere. In Austria, there are also recurring plans for budget financing that threaten the independence of the ORF.
The enemy image of Public Service Media
The “Orbanization” of the media usually follows the same pattern: First, every effort is made to defame critical media - personal attacks on journalists also increase. Terms like “lying press” or “state radio” further undermine trust in media. Especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, trust in so-called “traditional media” has been eroded for large parts of the population. Parallel to this, “alternative media” with right-wing populist to far-right orientations are being established, reaching hundreds of thousands of people and deliberately spreading conspiracy myths, false news, or entire disinformation campaigns. In Austria, the FPÖ has built a network of “patriotic” media that rail against the “system”, with public broadcasting as the main enemy. It is not without reason that the top advertising spots of these media were occupied for months with ads for the FPÖ petition against the “mandatory fee” during the major election year 2024. Since the coalition negotiations between the FPÖ and ÖVP – where the ORF editorial board wrote that the “destruction of the ORF” had begun [1] – the ORF must ask itself how it should deal with anti-democratic, populist forces and their broad media impact. After all, these forces stand in contrast to the public value, i.e., the value and benefit of independent reporting in the service of
society. Especially the categories of diversity, European integration, trust, and knowledge make it the ORF‘s task to actively oppose positions that are against Europe, science, or humanity. With 2.3 million daily consumers, the ORF bears a great responsibility here.
Taking a stand against conspiracy myths and Fake News
Especially in news programs, people must be able to rely on the information provided being correct and balanced. First, those who provide accurate and fact-based information should be heard. Second, multiple voices should be heard – whether experts, citizens, or affected individuals. Balance is not without reason a fundamental requirement for us citizens. However, the category of “balance” is rendered absurd when extreme positions or conspiracy myths are given as much space as scientifically based facts – just to report “balanced.” This is particularly problematic in topics like climate change, health, or migration. If the ORF invites people with extreme positions to discussion programs, they can spread their ideology or false information to a large audience - potentially endangering lives. During the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, vaccination was demonized through conspiracy theories, affecting vaccination willingness. Often, countering or refuting such statements in discussion programs did not help. On the contrary: such thought patterns are constructed so that any counterargument is interpreted as part of the conspiracy. Here, the ORF must take a clear stand and should no longer give space to extreme positions under the guise of balance. This was also evident in March 2025, when the far-right conspiracy theorist Martin Rutter was supposed to participate in an ORF Lower Austria panel discussion on Corona [2]. Although the discussion was canceled by the ORF after protests from participating experts, such a situation should be avoided in advance through appropriate invitation policies.
Courage to take a stand – even in digital space
In a time when media freedom [3], equality [4], or a united Europe [5] are increasingly under threat, the ORF must stand up for its values more strongly. Journalists must be able to work freely and should not shy away from taking a stand on TV and social media. The objectivity mandate – i.e., the obligation for journalists to carefully check the truth and origin of news and reports – is not violated when they critically report when important democratic values are in danger.
When the pillars of our democracy are threatened, the ORF bears a great democratic responsibility. Especially in the digital space, this task is currently inadequately fulfilled: journalists – albeit sometimes in a private role – fill an important gap there. The ORF should also be present there and expand its mission accordingly. After all, the digital space is long since part of our public sphere.
The eternal construction site of political independence
Although the long-overdue Constitutional Court ruling was implemented in March 2025, limiting the influence of the government and chancellor on committee appointments, this is only a small first step. With a view to the urgently needed and widely demanded depoliticization, this is only the minimal version of a reform. If the threat of anti-democratic populism is to be effectively countered, politicians must be willing to curtail their own influence on the ORF. This not only strengthens the credibility of public broadcasting but also makes it more difficult to instrumentalize for political agendas now and in the future. It is still open at this point how and whether the new government will address the points of “more citizen participation”, “diverse expertise”, “strengthened independence of committees”, and “strengthening the audience council” from the government program [6]. A first setback for these important projects was delivered by Vice Chancellor Andreas Babler, responsible for media, when he described the committee reform decided in March as completed and as “depoliticization”, contrary to the further plans in the government program [7]. To secure the ORF against political attacks in the future, it must not remain with this minimal version. Furthermore, it would be advisable to constitutionally anchor the independence and financing of the ORF.
Always has been, always will be?
“Always has been, always will be” – this is the argument we, as engaged people from civil society advocating for an independent ORF, hear repeatedly. Even in 2017, when we from #aufstehn launched a signature campaign under the hashtag #ORFretten and supported a parliamentary citizens‘ initiative following numerous attacks by politicians on the ORF. The goal: an ORF law that secures the future viability, independence, impartiality, and economic autonomy of the ORF. Over 50,000 people signed our online appeal, there were protest actions
and public discussions, and 15,917 people supported the parliamentary citizens‘ initiative. The discussed demands were only partially fulfilled and remained in place over the years. With the Constitutional Court ruling in 2023, which found the ORF law unconstitutional due to too much government influence and demanded the repair of corresponding passages by 2025, a new “window of opportunity” opened.
Some called it “hypocritical” when we subsequently demanded with emphasis from the turquoise-green government the depoliticization that the Constitutional Court had urged. An appeal to the government not to postpone the repair and thus also a committee reform any longer went unheard. Instead, the attacks and discrediting campaigns against the ORF from the right-populist camp grew louder; “Away with the ORF household levy” became one of the top slogans in the major election year. That these and other plans to curtail the ORF‘s independence did not find their way into the ORF law is solely due to the failure of the FPÖ-led government negotiations.
It is all the more important now to do everything possible to restore trust in public broadcasting – including that of those who have already been lost to the supposed “alternatives.”
The wisdom of the learned Austrians – “Always has been, always will be” – can only be refuted by taking action. If the government wants to democratize the ORF and protect its independence, it must inevitably curtail its own sphere of influence. Additionally, the ORF needs more space, but also courage, to bring its public value and associated values into public debates and the digital space.
ON SURVIVAL STRATEGIES FOR QUALITY ASSURANCE: THE PUBLIC BROADCASTERS OF THE FUTURE
GERHARD RUISS
IG AUTORINNEN AUTOREN ÖSTERREICH, “INITIATIVE ZUR BEWAHRUNG DER UNABHÄNGIGKEIT DES ORF” 2018
When something happens in their favor, like the never-ending solo appearance of the FPÖ party leader after the failure of government negotiations on February 12, 2025, during prime time on ORF 2, populist parties have no problem with partisanship. If broadcasters or newspapers are not available for this purpose, they are put under pressure to justify their existence.
Populist politics has no interest in including their viewpoints to broaden the spectrum of opinions; they assert unlimited power claims. If media cannot be instrumentalized for their purposes, they are worthless to them. Populist politics already has its own media and channels for constant presence.
The way populists deal with media not within their sphere of influence is the same everywhere. Representatives of independent newspapers and broadcasters are considered part of the “lying press” from their perspective, and investigations about them are seen as “spying.”
References
[1] https://www.ots.at/presseaussendung/OTS_20250124_OTS0019/die-zerstoerung-des-orf-beginnt
[2] https://www.profil.at/oesterreich/orf-niederoesterreich-corona-rutter-nowotny/403020744
[3] https://radiokulturhaus.orf.at/artikel/260871/Dialogforum-Medienfreiheit
[4] https://der.orf.at/unternehmen/leitbild-werte/gleichstellung/index.html
[5] https://der.orf.at/unternehmen/leitbild-werte/leitbild/index.html
[6] https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000259130/neue-orf-gremien-sollen-schon-vor-dem-sommerzusammentreten?ref=article
[7] https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000262367/reform-der-orf-gremien-bleibt-bei-reparatur-stehen-fuer-bablerentpolitisierung
A counter-check on how the populist critics of public broadcasters handle balance, diversity, and objectivity in their own media leads to the following result: Media operated by opponents of public broadcasters invariably adhere to the principle of bias, and like commercial private providers, they simply omit airtime for art, culture, and educational programs and critical reporting on topics within their own interest areas. Private providers are excused as they largely have to earn the money for their programs themselves, but party media operators are not. They are also partially funded by legally granted means, not from a fee-based system, but from state party funding. Populist parties and their
media lack art, culture, and educational programs mainly because education is not a necessity for them, and art and culture, like public broadcasters, are among their adversaries. This also applies to print media, especially quality media, which also face immediate threats of abolition when criticized.
The reason for this promising different approach to public broadcasters and independent newspapers by right-wing parties, alongside a return to party media, is primarily due to changed reception conditions. The ways of obtaining and distributing content have fundamentally changed in recent years; no one is dependent on receiving programs bound by time or location. No one is forced to be just a media consumer or pay for it; everyone can even become a participant in media events in networks with immediate observable effects. This has greatly favored the rise of populist-oriented media and platforms and, at least temporarily, put the conventional media market under pressure and more to the point: It comes down to the content. Public broadcasters have an undeniable advantage when it comes to the full spectrum of offered programs; they have the task and can afford to fulfill an information, education, and cultural mandate, making them unrivaled market leaders in the education and culture sector and the institutions that can guarantee the highest quality standards in the information sector. If this is not fulfilled in the information sector, the discussion about their justification for existence and especially their fee-based funding immediately resumes.
Questioning the funding of broadcasting is not entirely new; it has been a constant companion in the power struggle between public broadcasting and private providers. What is new is that it has become a permanent topic at party events, election campaigns, and party programs from the right-populist side. The alleged fight is against the “injustice” of the fee obligation for “non-users” (meaning via TV and/or radio reception) and the “burden” of fee payments for everyone else. The goal is to bring public programs under direct government control when participating in government. This attempt failed twice in Austria shortly before implementation, in 2019 due to the collapse of the Kurz-Strache government and in 2025 with the failure of the Kickl-Stocker government. Both times, platforms had previously formed that effectively sided with ORF. What both platforms could not prevent was, just like in Germany, the freezing of fees for public broadcasters for several years. Nevertheless, ORF has different star-
ting conditions and possibilities than those that have emerged in recent years, especially compared to developments and conditions like those of Slovak or Hungarian government broadcasting or Russian state television or the social network media empire of Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
ORF has a historic opportunity for a renewal push in general public perception, which no longer makes it look “old” or partisan, not by resorting to appeasement solutions with more inclusion of right-wing populists, but by addressing the no longer secured plausibility of its existential necessity. The prerequisite for this is: The independent financing of ORF must be maintained, the extent of previous financing must not be reduced, and the independence of ORF and the incompatibility of functions at other broadcasters and in ORF committees must be guaranteed.
It must also not be able to be destroyed from within. How and through what means can an ORF repositioned in this and any other conceivable way convince? Generally, through a well-coordinated offering of fixed programmed broadcasts and on-demand offerings. Specifically, with better integration of ORF with cultural offerings and events from outside and with better integration of cultural offerings and events beyond its program work. Both the presence of art, culture, and education in ORF must become more apparent, and ORF must appear more prominently in cultural life and education. It must utilize its starting advantages if it does not want to be pushed against the wall by a controlling politics and played against the wall by media competition fighting for market share. The greatest guarantees for its independence and survival lie in making itself so indispensable for Austrian cultural life and a general audience that it could only be made a marginal phenomenon or abolished with the intent of self-damage to Austria.
Without a media policy aware of the indispensable role of public programs and quality media, neither ORF nor quality media will be able to assume the roles necessary for maintaining democratic media conditions and a society built on reliable information and the greatest possible diversity of opinions and offerings. If not, even in countries where public service media and quality newspapers are the center around which all other media revolve today, they will end
in the past model of Russian state television or the future model of a network media world following the American example.
It is wrong and comes at the expense of program quality if fees or charges for public programs are frozen over entire legislative periods just because of the fear of populism; it is wrong if public service media allow right-wing populists to have a say in every topic and area, even where there is neither justification through a function nor appropriate expertise, which inevitably affects the level and quality of broadcasts, and it is wrong to believe that peace with right-wing populism can be achieved this way; it will only encourage them to take the next step.
Public broadcasters will not be able to avoid the debates about their justification for existence, how they want to differentiate themselves from private providers and party media, and they will particularly have to convincingly demonstrate how their program offerings stand out from other offerings so that they are sought after, heard, and seen by an audience willing to spend their money not only on all possible platform offerings but also on the public program of ORF. A little communication advice might not be bad in this context, whether it really has to be called “Payment Request for ORF Contribution” and not just “Invoice” when receiving the payment slip with the ORF contribution.
Saving on cultural programs, as was recently the case with German public broadcasters, will certainly not save public service media; on the contrary, it will provide their opponents with even more arguments as to why they are no longer needed or should be placed under state supervision, as intended with budget financing. ORF, its numerous contributors, and the audience, education, art and culture, freedom of expression, media diversity, and democracy deserve a different media future than this.
PUBLIC SERVICE MEDIA IN TIMES OF POPULIST ATTACKS –EXPERIENCES FROM #UNSERORF AND “ORF 2032”
ROBERT SEYFRIEDSBERGER
FORUM INFORMATIONSFREIHEIT, WWW.UNSER-ORF.AT 2025
In many democracies, public service media are under increasing pressure. Political influence on reporting, budget cuts, and attempts to align editorial offices with party lines are no longer isolated incidents. From Hungary to the UK to the USA, media houses are being weakened by structural interventions or even turned into government mouthpieces. The development shows: An independent media landscape is not a given – it must be actively defended and further developed.
In Austria, there have also been recent attempts to restructure the ORF financially and structurally in a way that would have endangered its political independence. The failed government negotiations between the FPÖ and ÖVP prevented an immediate dismantling, but the structural influence of politics remains. The temptation to use the ORF for party-political purposes exists in various camps – whether through direct influence on editorial offices or changes in governance structure.
Against this backdrop, a central question arises: How can public service media respond to populist attacks and sustainably strengthen themselves? The answer cannot lie solely in defending against political interference – rather, a positive vision is needed for a strong, independent public service broadcaster that is resilient from within.
This article highlights, based on experiences from #unserORF/www.unser-orf. at and “ORF 2032”, how civil society participation can be used to protect, reform, and sustainably shape public service media for the future.
#unserORF – A Civil Society Initiative in Response to Political Influence
When in January 2025, the government negotiations between FPÖ and ÖVP revealed increasingly concrete plans for the financial undermining and structural weakening of the ORF, it became clear: The independence of public service broadcasting was acutely at stake. This threat was the trigger for the civil society initiative #unserORF, which quickly set a broad mobilization in motion. The goal was to send a strong signal for an independent ORF – not as a political instrument driven by a party, but as a common good-oriented institution. Artists played a key role: Numerous well-known personalities – including Adele Neuhauser, Florian Scheuba, Ursula Strauss, and André Heller – publicly supported the initiative and signaled with their statements that it was about much more than just the ORF itself: It was about the media‘s basic provision in a democracy.
The response was enormous: Within a few weeks, over 43,000 people signed the petition, and more than 13,500 emails were sent directly to political decision-makers via unser-orf.at. Supported by over 70 organizations – from cultural institutions to civil society initiatives to media experts – #unserORF developed into a visible societal counterweight against attempts at political influence. But #unserORF was more than just a protest. It quickly became clear that it would not be enough to fight only against impending cuts. The discourse needed to be expanded: How can the ORF be strengthened in the long term? What reforms are necessary to structurally secure its independence? These questions led to the next phase of the initiative: “ORF 2032”, an open participation process for the future of the ORF.
“ORF 2032”: From Defense to Shaping the Future
The experience with #unserORF showed that protest alone is not enough to secure public service broadcasting in the long term. Although broad public support could build short-term political pressure, the structural problems – political influence, financial security, and the need for reforms – remained. Therefore, the next logical step was to shift the focus from mere defense to actively shaping the future. With “ORF 2032”, an open participation platform was launched where citizens, media experts, and cultural creators could jointly consider what an independent, common good-oriented ORF should look like in 2032 and what reforms are needed for this.
Why participation is crucial
Instead of discussing reforms behind closed doors, ORF 2032 relies on a broad, democratic approach: The users themselves shape the future vision for the ORF. This process is based on the principle that the people who finance and consume a public service medium should also have a voice in its further development.
Until the end of the online participation, over 880 participants registered and contributed 292 concrete contributions and 162 comments. The discussion clearly showed: Participants want an ORF that is more independent from political influence, more transparent in its financing and decision-making structure, and stronger in fulfilling its public service mandate.
Key reform topics discussed so far include:
• Political Independence: New models for appointing ORF committees to reduce party influence.
• Financing Models: How can stable financing be ensured that does not depend on short-term political majorities?
• Program Development: More diversity in reporting, better representation of all societal groups, and stronger cultural promotion.
• Transparency: Clear and regular reporting on ORF‘s revenues, expenses, and decision-making processes.
This broad participation process ran until the end of March 2025 and forms the basis for the next step: A multi-stakeholder dialogue in which experts from journalism, science, culture, and civil society develop concrete measures to implement the collected ideas. ORF 2032 could not only be a model for the future of the ORF but also an example of a new culture of democratic media design. Transparency as Protection Against Influence and Loss of Trust
Populist movements often attack public service broadcasting with simple but effective narratives: The ORF is controlled as a “state broadcaster”, engages in “leftist propaganda”, and is riddled with “cronyism”. Such claims are not only widespread in Austria – they are part of the standard repertoire of anti-democratic forces in many countries. The goal of this rhetoric is to undermine trust in independent media and replace them with party-affiliated or economically dependent alternatives.
Why transparency is the best antidote
One of the most effective methods to undermine such attacks is maximum transparency. When all relevant information – from budgets to salaries to program decisions – is openly accessible, myths and misinformation can be more easily debunked. Especially because the ORF is co-financed by all households, citizens have a legitimate interest in knowing exactly what their contribution is used for and how decisions are made.
The introduction of open data principles could be a decisive step here. Instead of publishing financial reports only once a year, the ORF could provide realtime insights into budgets, program investments, and decision-making processes. Possible measures could include:
• Detailed budgets with interactive dashboards that are publicly accessible.
• Open decision-making protocols of the committees to make it understandable which arguments led to certain measures.
• Publication of salary structures – not as individual salaries, but as a transparent overview by fields of activity.
Best practices: How other countries do it
Various public service media in Europe have already recognized that transparency is a central factor for trust.
• United Kingdom (BBC): The BBC publishes detailed reports on salaries and production costs. There is also an independent regulatory authority (Ofcom) that regularly reviews the independence and quality of the program.
• Scandinavia: Public service broadcasters like NRK (Norway) and SVT (Sweden) rely on transparent processes in program selection and offer detailed public reports on the distribution of production budgets.
• Germany (ARD/ZDF): After public criticism of salaries and structures, ARD launched a transparency offensive that includes detailed information on the use of funds and committee work.
The introduction of similar models at the ORF could help reduce mistrust among the population and undermine populist attacks. Especially in times of political uncertainty, maximum transparency can be an important shield for public service broadcasting – not only against external attacks but also as a measure for internal quality assurance.
From Vision to Implementation: A Proven Process for Reforms
The debate about the ORF is often shaped by short-term political interests – whether through attacks on its independence or reflexive defense of existing structures. But if the ORF is to remain viable in the long term, a structured, broad, and factual reform process is needed that goes beyond party-political agendas.
A promising model for such a transformation is the multi-stakeholder approach, which has already proven successful in other areas – for example, in the framework of mehrgrips.at, where a long-term vision for digital policy in Austria was developed in a structured process.
Why a Multi-Stakeholder approach?
Reforms in the media sector affect a variety of actors:
• Citizens who can contribute as viewers and fee payers.
• Journalists and media creators who implement the public service mandate.
• Cultural and creative professionals whose work is significantly supported by the ORF.
• Media scientists who analyze how independent broadcasting should position itself in a digital media world.
• Political decision-makers who set framework conditions without exercising content control.
Instead of playing off individual interests or party-political approaches against each other, a participatory reform process enables the development of a broad consensus on what role the ORF should play in ten or twenty years.
Step-by-Step transformation: From Vision to Measures
Based on the experiences from mehrgrips.at, a reform process for the ORF could proceed in the following steps:
1. Development of a positive vision
• What should an independent ORF look like in 2032?
• What principles and values should guide its work?
• What functions must it fulfill in a changing media landscape?
2. Derivation of concrete measures
• What structural changes are necessary to achieve the vision?
• How can sustainable financing be ensured without political influence?
• What governance mechanisms are needed to guarantee independent journalism in the long term?
3. Implementation with broad feedback
• Involvement of experts and civil society in the implementation phase.
• Regular evaluation to ensure that reform measures actually contribute to the desired independence and quality.
Transferability to the ORF and other Public Service Media
This participatory approach could also serve as a model in other countries. Public service media face similar challenges internationally:
• Political influence on structures and content
• Criticism of financing models and lack of transparency
• Competition from private media providers and digital platforms
By discussing reforms not only reactively as a response to political crises but proactively and participatively, public service broadcasting can be sustainably strengthened.
The success of “ORF 2032” could thus have a signaling effect beyond Austria – as a model of how a broad democratic debate about the future of the media landscape can be conducted.
Conclusion: Democratic Media Need Democratic Processes
The attacks on the ORF and other public service media in Europe show that independent journalism is not a given. Anti-democratic populism thrives on delegitimizing institutions, replacing facts with opinions, and polarizing public discourse. In this context, public service media are not part of the problem but a crucial pillar of the solution – provided they consistently align themselves with democratic principles and are willing to reform.
Public Service Media as a response to Populism
Populist actors deliberately use disinformation and distrust of established media to strengthen their own narratives. An independent, strong, and transparent ORF can counteract this by:
• Providing objective journalism based on facts and not following party-political agendas.
• Representing broad societal perspectives to counteract polarization.
• Fulfilling educational and cultural mandates that are not primarily focused on ratings but on societal value.
However, the ORF can only fulfill this role if it is perceived by the population as credible and independent – and here lies a central challenge.
The Importance of Participation: Lessons from #unserORF and ORF 2032
One of the clearest learnings from #unserORF and the participation process “ORF 2032” is that there is a great willingness among the population to actively participate in shaping public service broadcasting.
• More than 43,000 people signed the #unserORF petition.
• Over 13,500 emails were sent directly to political decision-makers.
• More than 880 people registered on the “ORF 2032” platform to discuss the future of the ORF and contributed 292 concrete contributions and 162 comments.
These numbers show: The need for independent, common good-oriented media is there – but so is the need for participation.
Politics should take these signals seriously. Public service media can only remain independent in the long term if their structures also become more democratic and transparent. Civil society has impressively demonstrated that it is not only ready to protest against influence but also to actively work on solutions. What’s Next for ORF 2032 and similar Initiatives?
The participation process “ORF 2032” is just the beginning. The discussions so far provide valuable insights into which reform measures are necessary – now it is about continuing this debate and deriving concrete steps.
These include:
• Further development of the results in a multi-stakeholder dialogue in which experts from media, science, culture, and civil society develop a long-term reform concept.
• Political incorporation of the developed proposals so that not only minimal
necessary repairs to the ORF law are made but a real course is set for the future of public service broadcasting.
• Transferability to other countries: The process started here in Austria could serve as a model for similar participatory media reforms in other European states.
An independent ORF is not a given – it is a conscious societal decision. The question is not only how the ORF is defended against political influence but how it can be made future-proof.
Democratic media need democratic processes. If #unserORF and “ORF 2032” have shown anything, it is that the population is ready to get involved. Now it is up to politics, media, and civil society to take this participation seriously – and together set the course for the future of an independent, common goodoriented public service broadcasting.
AUTHORS
1. Sanija Ameti – Sanija Ameti (1992) is a Swiss politician (independent, formerly GLP until January 2025). She has been the co-president of the political movement Operation Libero since 2021 and has served as a city councilor in Zurich since 2022.
2. Flavia Barca – Flavia Barca is an expert in cultural and media economics, former Rome City Councillor for Heritage and Culture, and President of Acume. She advises public and private organizations and has taught at “La Sapienza” and Teramo University.
3. Patrick Barwise – Patrick Barwise (1946) is Emeritus Professor of Management and Marketing at London Business School and Chairman of the UK’s Archive of Market and Social Research https://www.amsr.org.uk/.
4. Jürgen Betz – Jürgen Betz (1953) was Legal Director of Hessischer Rundfunk (hr) and a member of the executive board from 2008 to 2017. He is a member of the ARD Historical Commission, a member of the Initiative Group for Public Service Broadcasting, Cologne (IÖR).
5. Erika Bock-Rosenthal – Erika Bock-Rosenthal (1947) is a Professor of Sociology focusing on health, social inequality, and professions, and is chairwoman of the Initiative for Public Service Broadcasting Cologne (IÖR).
6. Jan Braathu (Interview) – Jan Braathu (1954) is the sixth OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media. He previously served as Head of the OSCE Missions to Serbia and Kosovo, and as Norway’s Ambassador to Kosovo, Albania, and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
7. Thibaut Bruttin – Thibaut Bruttin (1987) is Secretary General of Reporters Without Borders (RSF). He has worked for RSF since 2014, most recently as Deputy Director, and played a key role in establishing RSF press freedom centers in Ukraine and evacuating Afghan journalists.
8. Fritz Hausjell – Fritz Hausjell (1959) is an associate professor at the University of Vienna, media historian, co-founder of medien & zeit and president of Reporters Without Borders Austria (RSF).
9. Christian Haslinger – Christian Haslinger is a campaigner at #aufstehn. He is pursuing a master‘s degree in “Contemporary History and Media”.
10. Peter Huemer – Peter Huemer (1941) is an Austrian journalist and author. He is recognized for his critical analysis of politics, media, and democracy in Austria, and was a leading figure in the initiatives “SOS ORF” and “Rettet den
ORF.” 11. Michal Hvorecky – Michal Hvorecky (1976) is an author and translator. He heads the cultural department of the Old Town of Bratislava and lives with his family in Bratislava, Slovakia. His novel “Troll” has already been published in seven editions in German (Tropen/Klett Cotta Verlag).
12. Bernd Holznagel – Bernd Holznagel (1957) is a German legal scholar. His research focuses on information, telecommunications, and media law. He is a professor of media law at the University of Münster.
13. Maria Mayrhofer – Maria Mayrhofer is a political scientist, feminist, and managing director of the civil society NGO #aufstehn and was part of the initiative #ORFRETTEN 2017.
14. Gilles Marchand – Gilles Marchand (1962) is a sociologist and was Director General of SRG SSR from 2017 to 2024 and previously headed RTS. Since March 2025, he has been leading the Media and Philanthropy Initiative (IMP) at GCP.
15. Lisa Marchon – Lisa Marchon is Lead for Political Communications at Volt Deutschland and serves as a board member at Operation Libero. She is actively engaged in advancing progressive political initiatives in Germany.
16. Michele Mezza – Michele Mezza (1953) is a long-time journalist and essayist from Italy and serves as professor of New Marketing and New Media at the Federico II University of Naples.
17. Victor Pickard – Victor Pickard is a professor at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, specializing in media activism, media policy, and the political economy of media.
18. Gábor Polyák – Gábor Polyák (1977) is Professor of Media Law and Media Policy at Eötvös Loránd University Budapest and Senior Researcher at Mertek Media Monitor, focusing on media regulation and freedom of expression.
19. Michelle Roverelli – Michelle Roverelli is Director of Member Relations and Communications at the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), where she leads member engagement, marketing, and communications for public service media across 56 countries.
20. Gerhard Ruiss – Gerhard Ruiss (1951) is an austrian writer, cultural policy expert and a board member of the IG Authors and Writers. He was also part of the “Initiative to preserve the independence of ORF” 2018.
21. Renate Schröder – Renate Schroeder is the Director of the European Federation of Journalists. She has longstanding experience in, inter alia, representation and advocacy, policy drafting, media literacy, journalists’ rights and safety of journalists.
22. Konstantin Schischka – Konstantin Schischka is a project researcher and doctoral candidate in the ERC project GLORE at the University of Vienna.
23. Robert Seyfriedsberger – Robert Seyfriedsberger is an open data specialist and founder of the citizens’ initiative “Unser ORF – unsere Demokratie” 2025 (“Our ORF – Our Democracy” 2025).
24. Maja Sever – Maja Sever (1971) is a Croatian journalist and the president of the European Federation of Journalists. She is particularly committed to press freedom and the rights of media professionals across Europe.
25. Timothy Snyder – Timothy Snyder (1969) is an American historian and professor at Yale University and the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Toronto. He is renowned for his work on Eastern European history and his analysis of authoritarian trends.
26. Fredrik Stiernstedt – Fredrik Stiernstedt is a Swedish media scholar at Södertörn University in Stockholm. His research focuses on media policy, media economics, and the transformation of journalism.
27. Thomas Laschyk – Thomas Laschyk (1992) is a German journalist and anti-disinformation activist. He founded the award-winning fact-checking blog “Volksverpetzer”.
28. Hans Laroes – Hans Laroes (1955) is a Dutch journalist and was editor-inchief of NOS News. He chaired the EBU-Eurovision News Assembly and now heads the EBU-Eurovision Public Values Task Force.
29. Bartosz T. Wieliński – Bartosz T. Wieliński (1978) is a Polish journalist and deputy editor-in-chief of the daily newspaper “Gazeta Wyborcza.” He mainly reports on international politics and social developments in Poland.
30. Martin Wassermair – Martin Wassermair (1971) is a historian, political scientist, and publicist with numerous publications and teaching roles in media, culture, and politics. He currently heads the politics editorial team at Dorf TV.
31. Roger de Weck (Interview) – Roger de Weck (1953) is a Swiss publicist, author, and guest professor at the College of Europe in Bruges. He is former Director General of SRG SSR and ex-editor-in-chief of Die Zeit.
“SCUM“, “BASTARDS“, “BUGS“
This is how politicians like Vikor Orban, Robert Fico or Donald Trump denounce journalists. In many countries in Europe as well as in the US populist parties are fiercly attacking free media, specifically public service media. What are the consequences? How can media defend its independence? How should public service media react? 31 scientists, media experts, journalists and acitivists from the US, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy and Austria deliver answers analyzing a worldwide challenge considered to be a threat for media and democracy.
“UNDER ATTACK” is volume 7 of the series PUBLIC VALUE INTERNATIONAL focusing on relevant challenges for public service media supporting democracy and citizenship.
